Each time they passed cove or headland they thought, "Well now, surely it must be just around the next point." "There's a smoke, sir!" cried the sharp-eyed Bill. Sure enough--there was a tiny wisp of smoke, trickling up the face of the rocks. But no hut was to be seen. They landed, and pulled the boat out on the beach. Then they went toward the smoke. The fire was built among flat stones out in the open. A hollow-cheeked woman sat with a poor, scrawny scrap of a baby on her arm. In her other hand she held what looked like an old paint can, and she was stirring some thin sort of gruel in it, in spite of the weight of the baby on her arm. It was not heavy, poor little creature! "Good-morning. Where's your tent?" Grenfell asked, cheerily. "There she is." The woman pointed with the gruel stick to a mass of canvas and matting, plastered in patches with mud against the face of the cliff. "Why do you cook in the open?" "'Cos us hasn't got no stove." "Where's Tom?" "He's away. He's gone off wid Johnnie, tryin' to shoot a gull. Here, Bill, run an' fetch yer dad, an' tell him Dr. Grenfell wants 'un." A half-naked little boy about nine years old darted off into the scrub bushes. "What's the matter with baby?" Dr. Grenfell inquired kindly, as the infant clasped his finger and looked up into his mild face. "Hungry," was the mother's sufficient answer. "I ain't got nothin' to give him." Her lip trembled, and she turned her head away. The baby kept up a constant whimpering, like a lamb very badly scared. "It's half-starved," said the Doctor. "What do you give it?" "Flour, and berries," was the response. "I chews the loaf first--or else it ain't no good for him." Then a little girl, of perhaps five, and a boy of--maybe--seven, shyly came from behind the tent, where they had fled wild-eyed and hid when the strangers came. They had nothing on: but they were brown as chestnuts and fat as butter. It was snowing, and the snow had driven them toward the poor, mean fire where mother sat with the baby. "Glad to see the other children are fat," said the Doctor. "They bees eatin' berries all the time," was the mother's answer. Then suddenly the full force of their plight swept all other thoughts out of her mind. "What's t' good of t' government?" she cried. "Here is we all starvin'. And it's ne'er a crust they gives yer. There bees a sight o' pork an' butter in t' company's store. But it's ne'er a sight of 'im us ever gets. What are them doin'? T' agent he says he can't give Tom no more'n dry flour, an' us can't live on dat." Then a bent and weary figure shuffled on the scene. It was Tom, the poor husband and father. He had an old and rusty, single-barreled muzzle-loading gun, and he was carrying a dead sea-gull by the tip of one of its wings. Two small boys trudged along after him, their faces old before their time. They stood looking at the Doctor in wonderment.