“Present,” said Ol’ Chief.  “You tell Father Brachet us belly solly.”

“Oh, I’ll handle him without gloves,” said the Boy, giving back the mittens.  But Ol’ Chief wouldn’t take them.  He was holding up the smaller of the two parkis.

“You no like?”

“Oh, very nice.”

“You no buy?”

“You go sleep on trail,” said Nicholas, rising briskly.  “You die, no parki.”

The Boy laughed and shook his head, but still Ol’ Chief held out the deer-skin shirt, and caressed the wolf-fringe of the hood.

“Him cheap.”

“How cheap?”

“Twenty-fi’ dollah.”

“Don’t know as I call that cheap.”

“Yes,” said Nicholas.  “St. Michael, him fifty dollah.”

The Boy looked doubtful.

“I saw a parki there at the A. C. Store about like this for twenty.”

“A.  C. parki, peeluck,” Nicholas said contemptuously.  Then patting the one his father held out, “You wear him fifty winter.”

“Lord forbid!  Anyhow, I’ve only got about twenty dollars’ worth of tobacco and stuff along with me.”

“Me come white camp,” Nicholas volunteered.  “Me get more fi’ dollah.”

“Oh, will you?  Now, that’s very kind of you.”  But Nicholas, impervious to irony, held out the parki.  The Boy laughed, and took it.  Nicholas stooped, picked up the fur mittens, and, laying them on the Boy’s arm, reiterated his father’s “Present!” and then departed to the Kachime to bring down the Boy’s pack.

The Princess meanwhile had withdrawn to her own special corner, where in the daytime appeared only a roll of plaited mats, and a little, cheap, old hat-box, which she evidently prized most of all she had in the world.

“You see?  Lock!”

The Boy expressed surprise and admiration.

“No!  Really!  I call that fine.”

“I got present for Father Brachet”; and turning over the rags and nondescript rubbish of the hat-box, she produced an object whose use was not immediately manifest.  A section of walrus ivory about six inches long had been cut in two.  One of these curved halves had been mounted on four ivory legs.  In the upper flat side had been stuck, at equal distances from the two ends and from each other, two delicate branches of notched ivory, standing up like horns.  Between these sat an ivory mannikin, about three inches long, with a woeful countenance and with arms held out like one beseeching mercy.

“It’s fine,” said the Boy, “but—­a—­what’s it for?  Just look pretty?”

“Wait, I show you.”  She dived into the hat-box, and fished up a bit of battered pencil.  With an air of pride, she placed the pencil across the outstretched hands of the ivory suppliant, asking the Boy in dumb-show, was not this a pen-rest that might be trusted to melt the heart of the Holy Father?

“This way, too.”  She illustrated how anyone embarrassed by the possession of more than one pencil could range them in tiers on the ivory horns above the head of the Woeful One.