perceptibly thinner and thinner—­must have lost several tons at least—­and as nervous as a schoolmarm on the wrong side of matrimony.  When I’d come up with him and yell, or lain him with a rock at long range, he’d jump like a skittish colt and tremble all over.  Then he’d pull out on the run, tail and trunk waving stiff, head over one shoulder and wicked eyes blazing, and the way he’d swear at me was something dreadful.  A most immoral beast he was, a murderer, and a blasphemer.

“But towards the end he quit all this, and fell to whimpering and crying like a baby.  His spirit broke and he became a quivering jelly-mountain of misery.  He’d get attacks of palpitation of the heart, and stagger around like a drunken man, and fall down and bark his shins.  And then he’d cry, but always on the run.  O man, the gods themselves would have wept with him, and you yourself or any other man.  It was pitiful, and there was so I much of it, but I only hardened my heart and hit up the pace.  At last I wore him clean out, and he lay down, broken-winded, broken-hearted, hungry, and thirsty.  When I found he wouldn’t budge, I hamstrung him, and spent the better part of the day wading into him with the hand-axe, he a-sniffing and sobbing till I worked in far enough to shut him off.  Thirty feet long he was, and twenty high, and a man could sling a hammock between his tusks and sleep comfortably.  Barring the fact that I had run most of the juices out of him, he was fair eating, and his four feet, alone, roasted whole, would have lasted a man a twelvemonth.  I spent the winter there myself.”

“And where is this valley?” I asked

He waved his hand in the direction of the north-east, and said:  “Your tobacco is very good.  I carry a fair share of it in my pouch, but I shall carry the recollection of it until I die.  In token of my appreciation, and in return for the moccasins on your own feet, I will present to you these muclucs.  They commemorate Klooch and the seven blind little beggars.  They are also souvenirs of an unparalleled event in history, namely, the destruction of the oldest breed of animal on earth, and the youngest.  And their chief virtue lies in that they will never wear out.”

Having effected the exchange, he knocked the ashes from his pipe, gripped my hand good-night, and wandered off through the snow.  Concerning this tale, for which I have already disclaimed responsibility, I would recommend those of little faith to make a visit to the Smithsonian Institute.  If they bring the requisite credentials and do not come in vacation time, they will undoubtedly gain an audience with Professor Dolvidson.  The muclucs are in his possession, and he will verify, not the manner in which they were obtained, but the material of which they are composed.  When he states that they are made from the skin of the mammoth, the scientific world accepts his verdict.  What more would you have?