The Eternal Maiden

leaned forward, gazing at it intently, wildly-then uttered

the moving bergs glittered like monstrous diamonds electrically white. On the sequestered slopes of the low mountain valleys green mosses once more carpeted the earth, buttercups and dandelions peeped pale golden eyes from the ground, in the teeming crevices of the high promontories deli

and fulmar gulls uttered amorous calls,-on the green slopes the white hare of the arctic gambolled, and tiny bears, soft and silken flossed, played at the entrances of moss-ensconced caves. Out on the sea unexpected herds of walrus lay sleeping on floating ice; ha

alone-for with spring the

the rarest skins of animals and the feathers of birds, must be made for both mother and child; a new igloo is built for the event by the happy father, for the little one they believe should come in a hou

these, Annadoah, in the last week of fading winter, made, according to custom, new garments for herself. Then, as the sun rose in early spring and the birds mated, Ootah went away to the high cliffs, where the auks nested, and jumping from crag to crag, hundreds of feet above the sea, gathere

aced a new pot of soap stone, for everything in that place in which a new life was to come into being must by an unwritten law be freshly made and never used before. He built a bed of ice, laid it thick with moss, and over this tenderly placed, in t

smiled fondly and reached forth her little hands. "Thou art very kind, Ootah," she said, "thou

, she made her way, with bowed head, to her new home; they whispered

the bright igloo became black and she seemed to be floating on clouds. She remembered the Eskimo women wailing in the moonlight . . . by the open sea . . . and the curse they invoke

the arrogance of its little chin; she noted in her child that curious and often brief resemblance of the new-born to the father-and this immediately recalled vividly and achingly the face of Olafaksoah. This was her child, and his. Surely, surely, with great joy she understood! With this thought, an impetuous longing for the father filled her. Passionately pressing the little creature to her breast she gave vent to the homesickness and ache of her heart in wild, convulsed sobs. The touch of the little one, the resemblance of its tiny face to that of the blond man-these brought back the old passion and longing in all their bitter

er face upturned, tear drops glistening beneath her eyes. The wise woman placed some of the fried walrus meat, or seralatoq-the prescribed food for a mother the day her child is bo

hall give thee the name they gave thee in the great dark ere thou earnest

d not be called upon to learn of the spirits any name for this unhappy child. It had, indeed, been named by the dead and with it the unutte

ath lids scarred as by the claws of a hawk, the baby's eyes had been blasted by some unknown prenatal disease-the terrible dead, with their talon-hands, had smitten! The child was organically blind, and, being defective and fatherless, Annadoah knew that, by the law of her peo

ntly suggestive of its father's, she felt that she could never part from this familiar and intimate link with the spontaneous and powerful passion of her girlhood. When she peered into thos

the child's face t

ut the ilisitok has gone and never will she breathe o'er thee the name I know . . . the name I felt stirring within me since the night . . . when th

he pressed her fingers upon

ity in her eyes. "Thou wilt never see Sukh-eh-nukh, nor the ahmingmah, nor the birds that fly in the air, Spring Bunting. All thy days shall be as the long night, and thy whole life shall be witho

she heard the ominous sound of a native rushing by the igloo and vo

The danger was immediate-she must act at onc

tant they might come with wicked ropes to wrap about the baby's tender neck. That she must flee she knew-but where? Where? She thought of Ootah. But Ootah was in the mountains. An

the south. It was a boxhouse, built on a promontory of the Greenland coast. She remembered it, as she had seen it on a journey south some sum

rn in the spring? When the buntings sing?" She laughed spontaneo

placed the child into the hood on her back. Inside this was lined with the breasts of baby auks and made downy with fibrous moss. She hurriedly secured the child to herself by means of a

ding from the igloo and peeped cautiously from the entrance. She c

hirled with the fragments of what they said. She knew the moment had come to depart. She emerge

h of will, and then proceeded to walk slowly, with her head bent and her face concealed, so as to avoid arousing suspicion, over the dangerous area.

undoubtedly watching. She turned about the cliff, her heart bounding tumultuously, and, panting the words of the magic spell, asked that her legs be given the swiftness of the wind spirits

rd-or imagined-the angry cries