For long he pondered on the days of his youth, till the fire died down and the frost bit deeper.  He replenished it with two sticks this time, and gauged his grip on life by what remained.  If Sit-cum-to-ha had only remembered her grandfather, and gathered a larger armful, his hours would have been longer.  It would have been easy.  But she was ever a careless child, and honored not her ancestors from the time the Beaver, son of the son of Zing-ha, first cast eyes upon her.  Well, what mattered it?  Had he not done likewise in his own quick youth?  For a while he listened to the silence.  Perhaps the heart of his son might soften, and he would come back with the dogs to take his old father on with the tribe to where the caribou ran thick and the fat hung heavy upon them.

He strained his ears, his restless brain for the moment stilled.  Not a stir, nothing.  He alone took breath in the midst of the great silence.  It was very lonely.  Hark!  What was that?  A chill passed over his body.  The familiar, long-drawn howl broke the void, and it was close at hand.  Then on his darkened eyes was projected the vision of the moose—­the old bull moose—­the torn flanks and bloody sides, the riddled mane, and the great branching horns, down low and tossing to the last.  He saw the flashing forms of gray, the gleaming eyes, the lolling tongues, the slavered fangs.  And he saw the inexorable circle close in till it became a dark point in the midst of the stamped snow.

A cold muzzle thrust against his cheek, and at its touch his soul leaped back to the present.  His hand shot into the fire and dragged out a burning faggot.  Overcome for the nonce by his hereditary fear of man, the brute retreated, raising a prolonged call to his brothers; and greedily they answered, till a ring of crouching, jaw-slobbered gray was stretched round about.  The old man listened to the drawing in of this circle.  He waved his brand wildly, and sniffs turned to snarls; but the panting brutes refused to scatter.  Now one wormed his chest forward, dragging his haunches after, now a second, now a third; but never a one drew back.  Why should he cling to life? he asked, and dropped the blazing stick into the snow.  It sizzled and went out.  The circle grunted uneasily, but held its own.  Again he saw the last stand of the old bull moose, and Koskoosh dropped his head wearily upon his knees.  What did it matter after all?  Was it not the law of life?

NAM-BOK THE UNVERACIOUS

“A bidarka, is it not so?  Look! a bidarka, and one man who drives clumsily with a paddle!”

Old Bask-Wah-Wan rose to her knees, trembling with weakness and eagerness, and gazed out over the sea.

“Nam-Bok was ever clumsy at the paddle,” she maundered reminiscently, shading the sun from her eyes and staring across the silver-spilled water.  “Nam-Bok was ever clumsy.  I remember....”

But the women and children laughed loudly, and there was a gentle mockery in their laughter, and her voice dwindled till her lips moved without sound.