Many shed tears for Pomiuk when he was gone.  They missed his joyous laughter and his smiling face.  Doctor Grenfell missed him sorely.  He could not forget the suffering, naked little boy that he had rescued from the rocks of Nachvak Bay, and he decided that some provision should be made to care for the other orphaned, homeless, neglected children of Labrador.  In some way, he decided, the funds for such a home had to be found, though he had no means then at his disposal for the purpose.  He further decided that the home must not be an institution merely but a real home made pleasant for the boys and girls, where they would have motherly care and sympathy, and where they should have a school to go to like the children of our own favoured land.

With cheerful optimism and heroic determination Doctor Grenfell set for himself the task of establishing such a home.  And in the end great things grew out of the suffering and death of Gabriel Pomiuk.  The splendid courage and cheerfulness of the little Eskimo lad was to result in happiness for many other little sufferers.  Now, as always it was, with Doctor Grenfell, “I can if I will,”—­none of the uncertainty of, “I will if I can.”  He pitched into the work of raising money to build that children’s home.  He lectured, and wrote, and talked about it in his usual enthusiastic way, and money began to come to him from good people all over the world.  At length enough was raised and the home was built.

He had already picked up and taken into his mission family so many boys and girls, orphans or otherwise, that were without home or shelter, and that he could not leave behind him to suffer and die, that he had nearly enough on his hands to populate the new building before it was ready for them.  Indeed he soon found himself almost in the position of the “old woman that lived in a shoe,” and “had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”  His big kind fatherly heart would never permit him to abandon a homeless child, and so he took them under his care, and somehow always managed to provide for them.

It was about the time of Pomiuk’s death, I believe, that the first of these children came to him.  One day, when cruising north in the Strathcona, he was told that a family living in an isolated and lonely spot on the Labrador coast required the attention of a doctor.  He answered the call at once.

When he approached the bleak headland where the cabin stood, and his vessel hove her anchor, he was quite astonished that no one came out of the cabin to offer welcome, as is the custom with Labradormen everywhere when vessels anchor near their homes.  He and his mate were put ashore in a boat, and as they walked up the trail to the cabin still no one appeared and no smoke issued from the stovepipe, which, rising through the roof, served as a chimney.  When he lifted the latch he was quite decided no one, after all, was at home.

Upon entering the cabin a shocking scene presented itself.  The mother of the family lay upon the bed with wide-open stare.  Doctor Grenfell’s practiced eye told him she was dead.  The father, a Scotch fisherman and trapper, was stretched upon the floor, helplessly ill, and a hasty examination proved that he was dying.  Five frightened, hungry, cold little children were huddled in a corner.