“Me go get Shaman.”

“No; he come soon.”  Muckluck clung to him.

They both crouched down by the fire.

“You ’fraid he’ll die before the Shaman gets here?”

“Oh no,” said Muckluck soothingly, but her face belied her words.

The sick man called hoarsely.  Nicholas got him some water, and propped him up to drink.  He glared over the cup with wild eyes, his teeth chattering against the tin.  The Boy, himself, felt a creep go down his spine.

Muckluck moved closer to him.

“Mustn’t say he die,” she whispered.  “If Nicholas think he die, he drag him out—­leave him in the snow.”  “Never!”

“Sh!” she made him a sign to be quiet.  The rambling fever-talk went on, Nicholas listening fascinated.  “No Pymeut,” she whispered, “like live in ighloo any more if man die there.”

“You mean, if they know a person’s dying they haul him out o’ doors—­and leave him a night like this?”

“If not, how get him out ... after?”

“Why, carry him out.”

“Touch him?  Touch dead man?” She shuddered.  “Oh, no.  Bad, bad!  I no think he die,” she resumed, raising her voice.  But Nicholas rejoined them, silent, looking very grave.  Was he contemplating turning the poor old fellow out?  The Boy sat devising schemes to prevent the barbarism should it come to that.  The wind had risen; it was evidently going to be a rough night.

With imagination full of sick people turned out to perish, the Boy started up as a long wail came, muffled, but keen still with anguish, down through the snow and the earth, by way of the smoke-hole, into the dim little room.

“Oh, Nicholas! what was that?”

“What?”

“Wait!  Listen!  There, that!  Why, it’s a child crying.”

“No, him Chee.”

“Let’s go and bring him in.”

“Bring dog in here?”

“Dog!  That’s no dog.”

“Yes, him dog; him my Chee.”

“Making a human noise like that?”

Nicholas nodded.  The only sounds for some time were the doleful lamenting of the Mahlemeut without, and the ravings of the Pymeut Chief within.

The Boy was conscious of a queer, dream-like feeling.  All this had been going on up here for ages.  It had been like this when Columbus came over the sea.  All the world had changed since then, except the steadfast North.  The Boy sat up suddenly, and rubbed his eyes.  With that faculty on the part of the unlearned that one is tempted to call “American,” a faculty for assimilating the grave conclusions of the doctors, and importing them light-heartedly into personal experience, he realised that what met his eyes here in Nicholas’ house was one of the oldest pictures humanity has presented.  This was what was going on by the Yukon, when King John, beside that other river, was yielding Magna Charta to the barons.  While the Caesars were building Rome the Pymeut forefathers were building just such ighloos as this.  While Pheidias wrought his marbles, the men up here carved walrus-ivory, and, in lieu of Homer, recited “The Crow’s Last Flight” and “The Legend of the Northern Lights.”