98 BY ESKIMO DOG-SLED 



they ushered in the owner of the plank and 

 told me the price of it. I paid the man right 

 gladly, and out he went, chuckling and grin- 

 ning, with his mind filled with visions of all 

 the things he would buy when next the trading 

 store was open. " Beautiful plank," said 

 Johannes ; and out the two of them went to 

 borrow tools from the cooper. Then followed 

 a couple of days of sled-mending. They sawed 

 the plank to the shape of the old runner ; 

 they bored holes in it in the proper places, 

 using an awl this time instead of bullets from 

 a gun ; they bound it in place with thongs, 

 and left my sled standing on the snow looking 

 as good as new, while they carried the old 

 broken runner and its tree-trunk patch home 

 to their lodgings and chopped them up for 

 firewood. 



But they shook their heads over my sled 

 on the journey home : " No good," they said, 

 " one runner new and one runner old," and 

 so my travelling sled, with its brand-new 

 runner made of that beautiful plank, had to 

 be cast aside when we got home, and ended 

 its days in the less poetical tasks of fetching 

 water and clearing away the snow. But we 

 got home, in spite of those runners that did 

 not agree ; and I have no doubt that Julius 

 and Johannes spent many an hour telling 



