And I shifted my judgment accordingly (the first revision, but by no account the last), and deemed him a monumental effigy of truth.  Why it was I know not, but the spirit moved me to repeat a tale told to me by a man who had dwelt in the land too long to know better.  It was of the great bear that hugs the steep slopes of St Elias, never descending to the levels of the gentler inclines.  Now God so constituted this creature for its hillside habitat that the legs of one side are all of a foot longer than those of the other.  This is mighty convenient, as will be reality admitted.  So I hunted this rare beast in my own name, told it in the first person, present tense, painted the requisite locale, gave it the necessary garnishings and touches of verisimilitude, and looked to see the man stunned by the recital.

Not he.  Had he doubted, I could have forgiven him.  Had he objected, denying the dangers of such a hunt by virtue of the animal’s inability to turn about and go the other way—­had he done this, I say, I could have taken him by the hand for the true sportsman that he was.  Not he.  He sniffed, looked on me, and sniffed again; then gave my tobacco due praise, thrust one foot into my lap, and bade me examine the gear.  It was a mucluc of the Innuit pattern, sewed together with sinew threads, and devoid of beads or furbelows.  But it was the skin itself that was remarkable.  In that it was all of half an inch thick, it reminded me of walrus-hide; but there the resemblance ceased, for no walrus ever bore so marvellous a growth of hair.  On the side and ankles this hair was well-nigh worn away, what of friction with underbrush and snow; but around the top and down the more sheltered back it was coarse, dirty black, and very thick.  I parted it with difficulty and looked beneath for the fine fur that is common with northern animals, but found it in this case to be absent.  This, however, was compensated for by the length.  Indeed, the tufts that had survived wear and tear measured all of seven or eight inches.

I looked up into the man’s face, and he pulled his foot down and asked, “Find hide like that on your St Elias bear?”

I shook my head.  “Nor on any other creature of land or sea,” I answered candidly.  The thickness of it, and the length of the hair, puzzled me.

“That,” he said, and said without the slightest hint of impressiveness, “that came from a mammoth.”

“Nonsense!” I exclaimed, for I could not forbear the protest of my unbelief.  “The mammoth, my dear sir, long ago vanished from the earth.  We know it once existed by the fossil remains that we have unearthed, and by a frozen carcase that the Siberian sun saw fit to melt from out the bosom of a glacier; but we also know that no living specimen exists.  Our explorers—­”

At this word he broke in impatiently.  “Your explorers?  Pish!  A weakly breed.  Let us hear no more of them.  But tell me, O man, what you may know of the mammoth and his ways.”