When we left the place he seemed more cheerful, though still very pale, and Mary promised to come again to see him. He belongs to a party of three men bound for Koyuk River. The young man who sings so well sometimes at the Mission is one of the three, but the other I have not yet seen. Later on Mary and I called upon Alice, the Eskimo girl, who lives with her mother, near the hotel, and who is suffering with quinsy. I found Jennie and Charlie there, and took them out for a walk down on the beach, where the little girl's aunt was cutting ice. As we passed the A. E. Store I noticed a dog lying on the porch having a bloody mouth, but as he lay quietly I did not think much about it. After we had passed down the trail for a block or so, I heard a commotion behind us, and looking back saw a young man rush out into the trail and shoot a dog, the one, as I afterwards learned, that I had seen on the porch. It had been mad, and snapping around all day, but the men could not find it earlier, and the two little children and I had passed within a few feet of it without being conscious of danger. Mr. H. came in to supper, also two others from the camp of the shipwrecked people, thirty miles away to the east of us. At supper one of the men offered to stake some claims for us over near their camp, where they think there is gold. They took our names on paper, and said that after prospecting, if they found gold, they would let us into the strike before any others. They will remain over night, and leave early in the morning. Mr. H. and Mary called after supper to see the man who was bitten by the mad dog, and found him looking better, and not so worried as this morning. His friend was playing on the banjo, and all were sitting quietly around the fire. Monday, December twenty-fourth: The two boys, G. and B., came in late last evening, tired and hungry, from the Nome trail, glad to arrive at home in time for Christmas. Early this morning Mary dressed herself up hideously as Santa Claus, bringing a big box of presents in while we sat at the breakfast table and distributing them. Of course there were the regulation number of fake packages, containing funny things for the boys, but each one had a present of something, and I had a souvenir spoon just from Nome, an ivory paper knife of Eskimo make from the girls, and later a white silk handkerchief. Going into the sitting-room after breakfast, we were met by the fumes of burnt cork, hair or cotton, and upon inquiry were told that Santa Claus had had a little mishap; his whiskers had been singed by coming into contact with the lamp chimney and that it had delayed matters somewhat until Ricka, his assistant, could find more cotton on the medicine shelves; but the end of all was hearty laughter and a jolly good time; an effort to forget, for the present, the day in our own homes thousands of miles away.