"I went for a few months to the Mission School at Wrangel," said Kalitan. "I learned much there. They teach the boys to read and write and do sums and to work the ground besides. They learn much more than the girls." "Huh!" said the old chief, grimly. "Girls learn too much. They no good for Indian wives, and white men not marry them. Best for girls to stay at home at the will of their fathers until they get husbands." "So you've been in Wrangel," said Ted to Kalitan. "We went there, too. It's a dandy place. Do you remember the fringe of white mountains back of the harbour? The people said the woods were full of game, but we didn't have time to go hunting. There are a few shops there, but it seemed to me a very small place to have been built since 1834. In the States whole towns grow up in two or three weeks." "Huh!" said Kalitan, with a quick shrug of his shoulders, "quick grow, sun fade and wind blow down." "I don't think the sun could ever fade in Wrangel," laughed Ted. "They told me there it hadn't shone but fifteen days in three months. It rained all the time." "Rain is nothing," said Kalitan. "It is when the Ice Spirit speaks in the North Wind's roar and in the crackling of the floes that we tremble. The glaciers are the children of the Mountain Spirit whom our fathers worshipped. He is angry, and lo! he hurls down icebergs in his wrath, he tosses them about, upon the streams he tosses the _kyaks_ like feathers and washes the land with the waves of Sitth. When our people are buried in the ground instead of being burnt with the fire, they must go for ever to the place of Sitth, of everlasting cold, where never sun abides, nor rain, nor warmth." Ted had listened spellbound to this poetic speech and gazed at Kalitan in open-mouthed amazement. A boy who could talk like that was a new and delightful playmate, and he said: "Tell me more about things, Kalitan," but the Indian was silent, ashamed of having spoken. "What do you do all day when you are at home?" persisted the American. "In winter there is nothing to do but to hunt and fish," said Kalitan. "Sometimes we do not find much game, then we think of how, when a Thlinkit dies, he has plenty. If he has lived as a good tribesman, his kyak glides smoothly over the silver waters into the sunset, until, o'er gently flowing currents, it reaches the place of the mighty forest. A bad warrior's canoe passes dark whirlpools and terrible rapids until he reaches the place we speak not of, where reigns Sitth.