1 24 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE 



driver, a sensible, middle-aged Eskimo, had no such 

 misgivings. "Let them go," he said; "they will 

 find their way." And he was right. The native gift 

 for path-finding is a wonderful thing, and it was with 

 a mind free from doubt as to the outcome that the 

 heathen woman pursued her way on foot. 



The missionary turned his sledge homeward again, 

 and came to Okak in the small hours of the morning. 

 And in the meantime the heathen woman and her 

 boys, after hours of rough tramping, had sighted the 

 Nappartok houses. There, after a rest, they found a 

 sledge to take them to Hebron. 



The rest of the story reads like a romance ; but 

 none the less it is true, and a delightful bit of Eskimo 

 history. Wonder of wonders, a Killinek sledge was 

 waiting at Hebron. A belated mail-bag had been 

 sent south in the care of two of the Killinek Eskimos, 

 and the sledge was waiting for a possible return post 

 from the south . 



It was like a glimpse of home to the heathen 

 woman to see a face from her own village. But more 

 than that, for before many days were past there was 

 a wedding at Hebron, when one of the sledge- 

 drivers, a middle-aged man and a Christian, made 

 the heathen widow his wife ; and it was a wedding 

 party that drove away from the village in the cold 

 air of the morning. 



Could anyone imagine a stranger honeymoon ? 



The newly married couple spent the cooler hours 

 of dawn and dusk in toiling and plodding through 

 the melting snow of the mountain passes ; they rested 



