“Theyse a quare noise without.”

“It’s the wind knockin’ down yer chimbly,” says Mr. Hardy encouragingly.

“It don’t sound like Nich’las, annyhow.  May the divil burrn him in tarment and ile fur disappoyntin’ th’ kid.”

A rattle at the latch, and the Pymeut opened the door.

“Lorrd love ye! ye’re a jool, Nich’las!” screamed O’Flynn; and the mucklucks passed from one to the other so surreptitiously that for all Kaviak’s wide-eyed watchfulness he detected nothing.

Nicholas supped with his white friends, and seemed bent on passing the night with them.  He had to be bribed with tobacco and a new half-dollar to go home and keep Christmas in the bosom of his family.  And still, at the door, he hesitated, drew back, and laid the silver coin on the table.

“No.  It nights.”

“But it isn’t really dark.”

“Pretty soon heap dark.”

“Why, I thought you natives could find your way day or night?”

“Yes.  Find way.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“Pymeut no like dark;” and it was not until Mac put on his own snow-shoes and offered to go part of the way with him that Nicholas was at last induced to return home.

The moment Kaviak was ascertained to be asleep, O’Flynn displayed the mucklucks.  No mistake, they were dandies!  The Boy hung one of them up, by its long leg, near the child’s head at the side of the bunk, and then conferred with O’Flynn.

“The Colonel’s made some little kind o’ sweet-cake things for the tree.  I could spare you one or two.”

“Divil a doubt Kaviak’ll take it kindly, but furr mesilf I’m thinkin’ a pitaty’s a dale tastier.”

There was just one left in camp.  It had rolled behind the flour-sack, and O’Flynn had seized on it with rapture.  Where everybody was in such need of vegetable food, nobody under-estimated the magnificence of O’Flynn’s offering, as he pushed the pitaty down into the toe of the muckluck.

“Sure, the little haythen’ll have a foine Christian Christmas wid that same to roast in the coals, begorra!” and they all went to bed save Mac, who had not returned, and the Boy, who put on his furs, and went up the hill to the place where he kept the Christmas-tree lodged in a cotton-wood.

He shook the snow off its branches, brought it down to the cabin, decorated it, and carried it back.

* * * * *

Mac, Salmon P. Hardy, and the frost-bitten Schiff were waked, bright and early Christmas morning, by the Boy’s screaming with laughter.

The Colonel looked down over the bunk’s side, and the men on the buffalo-skin looked up, and they all saw Kaviak sitting in bed, holding in one hand an empty muckluck by the toe, and in the other a half-eaten raw potato.

“Keep the rest of it to roast, anyhow, or O’Flynn’s heart will be broken.”

So they deprived Kaviak of the gnawed fragment, and consoled him by helping him to put on his new boots.