CHAPTER XVIII 



AN ESKIMO ROMANCE 



The heathen woman was homesick. 



It had been a great adventure for her, this journey 

 from the north. She had left her native village and 

 her friends, and had turned her back upon the old 

 turf hut, where her husband, old Tuglavi, the famous 

 chief of the northern heathen, had breathed his last. 

 She was a widow. And she was not old Tuglavi' s 

 only widow ! The old man had a wife, the wife of 

 his youth, grown old with him, and too old and 

 feeble to do the work of an Eskimo household ; so 

 old Tuglavi had taken this poor woman for his other 

 wife, so that there might be someone in the house to 

 do the work. 



Now she was a widow, and she would travel south- 

 ward. Her brother had gone south long years before, 

 and she would go to find him. Distance had no 

 meaning for her ; south he had gone, and southward 

 she would go as well. It would be better for her, she 

 thought, to find a shelter under her brother's roof 

 than to live as a widow in the north ; she would have 

 food and a home, and her boys would learn to be 

 hunters and to help her brother in his work ; and, 

 above all, she would be with her relatives again and 

 what tie is stronger, especially in the mind of an 

 Eskimo, than the tie of blood ? 



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