When the door opened the next time, it was to admit Mac, Nicholas with Kaviak in his arms, O’Flynn gesticulating like a windmill, and, last of all, the Boy.

Kaviak was formally introduced, but instead of responding to his hosts’ attentions, the only thing he seemed to care about, or even see, was something that in the hurly-burly everybody else overlooked—­the decorations.  Mac’s stuffed birds and things made a remarkably good show, but the colossal success was reserved for the minute shrunken skin of the baby white hare set down in front of the great fire for a hearthrug.  If the others failed to appreciate that joke, not so Kaviak.  He gave a gurgling cry, struggled down out of Nicholas’s arms, and folded the white hare to his breast.

“Where are the other Indians?” said Mac.

“Looking after the dogs,” said Father Wills; and as the door opened, “Oh yes, give us that,” he said to Andrew.  “I thought”—­he turned to the Colonel—­“maybe you’d like to try some Yukon reindeer.”

“Hooray!”

“Mate?  Arre ye sayin’ mate, or is an angel singin’?”

“Now I know that man’s a Christian,” soliloquised Potts.

“Look here:  it’ll take a little time to cook,” said Mac, “and it’s worth waitin’ for.  Can you let us have a pail o’ hot water in the meantime?”

“Y-yes,” said the Colonel, looking as if he had enough to think about already.

“Yes, we always wash them first of all,” said Father Wills, noticing how Mac held the little heathen off at arm’s length.  “Nicholas used to help with that at Holy Cross.”  He gave the new order with the old authoritative gesture.

“And where’s the liniment I lent you that you’re so generous with?” Mac arraigned O’Flynn.  “Go and get it.”

Under Nicholas’s hands Kaviak was forced to relinquish not only the baby hare, but his own elf locks.  He was closely sheared, his moccasins put off, and his single garment dragged unceremoniously wrong side out over his head and bundled out of doors.

“Be the Siven! he’s got as manny bones as a skeleton!”

“Poor little codger!” The Colonel stood an instant, skillet in hand staring.

“What’s that he’s got round his neck?” said the Boy, moving nearer.

Kaviak, seeing the keen look menacing his treasure, lifted a shrunken yellow hand and clasped tight the dirty shapeless object suspended from a raw-hide necklace.

Nicholas seemed to hesitate to divest him of this sole remaining possession.

“You must get him to give it up,” said Father Wills, “and burn it.”

Kaviak flatly declined to fall in with as much as he understood of this arrangement.

“What is it, anyway?” the Boy pursued.

“His amulet, I suppose.”  As Father Wills proceeded to enforce his order, and pulled the leather string over the child’s head, Kaviak rent the air with shrieks and coughs.  He seemed to say as well as he could, “I can do without my parki and my mucklucks, but I’ll take my death without my amulet.”