210 
T H E PAEEffEL L. 
They did not return: I had read enough of treaty- 
makings not to expect them too confidently. But the 
next day came a party of five, on foot; two old men, 
one of middle age, and a couple of gawky boys. We 
had missed a number of articles soon after the first 
party left us, an axe, a saw, and some knives. We 
found afterward that our storehouse at Butler Island 
had been entered: we were too short-handed to guard 
my excursions to the north. I then gave them leave 
to go. They yoked in their dogs in less than two 
minutes, got on their sledges, cracked their two-fathom- 
and-a-half-long seal-skin whips, and were off down the 
ice to the southwest at a rate of seven knots an hour. 
