aw that he held three double eagles.
She smiled, for she knew that even here the value of yellow disks
marked with those strange pictures which Uncle Sam imprints upon them
was known.

The man, dropping his harpoon, began to talk rapidly. He waved his
hands. He bobbed his head. At last he arose, sprang from the sleeping
compartment and began to walk the space before the open fire. He was
still talking. It seemed as if he would never run down.

When at last he had finished and had thrown himself once more upon the
floor of the sleeping-room, the interpreter began:

"He say, that one, he say, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales two month, three
month, all right, maybe. Go now? Not go.' He say, that one, 'Wanna
go now; never come back.' He say, that one, 'Two, three, four days
come ice. Not plenty ice,' say that one. 'Some water, some ice. See
water. Too much water. Wanna cross. No cross. Quick starve. Quick
freeze.'

"'He say, that one, 'Tide crack spirit all-a-time lift ice, push ice
this way, that way. Wanna kill man. No can go.'

"He say, that one, 'Great dead whale spirit wanna lift ice, wanna throw
ice this way, that way, all way. Wanna kill man. Man no go Cape
Prince Wales.'

"He say, that one, 'Wanna go Cape Prince Wales, mebby two month, mebby
three month. Mebby can do. Can't tell,' he say, that one."

The college boy smiled a grim smile and pocketed his gold.

"Which all means," he said, "that the ice is not sufficiently compact,
not well enough frozen together for the old boy to risk a passage, and
that we'll be obliged to wait until he thinks it's O. K. Probably two
or three months. Meanwhile, welcome to our village! Make yourselves
at home!" He threw back his shoulders and laughed a boyish laugh.

"Oh!" exclaimed Marian, ready to indulge in a childish bit of weeping.

"Yes," smiled the boy, "but think of the sketches you'll have time to
make."

"No canvas," she groaned.

"That's easy. Use squares of this sealskin the women tan white for
making slippers."

"The very thing!" exclaimed Marian. She was away at once in search of
some of this new style canvas, in her eagerness to be at work on some
winter sketches of these most interesting people, quite forgetting the
peril of natives, the danger of the food supply giving out, the
probability of an unpleasant meeting with the bearded stranger.

Lucile, always of a more practical frame of mind, at once attacked the
knotty proble