On the wall in the library of Kalin the priest hung a necklace of such, containing a full score of magnificent stones, each of many carats weight, fairly well cut into facets by the Sardanian lapidaries who had fashioned them. Each stone was set in a ring of the glittering ilium, attached one to another with links of the metal. One innovation the strangers took into the valley that was hailed with acclaim. Until the advent of Polaris and Rose Emer not a button was known in the length of the land. Everything sartorial was fastened with buckles. Sardanian craftsmen and housewives were quick to note the uses of the perforated disks, and buttons were straightaway the new fashion, and were sewn on all garments. When enough were placed to answer their purpose of holding things together still more were added for ornament, until some of the Sardanian robes bore no distant likeness to the creations of a Parisian modiste, with their rows of holeless buttons. * * * * * On the fifth day after their interview with the Prince Helicon, Kard the Smith came to the gateway to repay their visit, and to bring an invitation to Polaris to go out with a party of the hunters along the Hunters' Road to the edge of the wilderness to hunt the white bear. Six Sardanians made up the hunting-party, of whom two were Kard the Smith and Morolas, one of the tall brothers of Helicon. All were armed with spears tipped with ilium blades, axes, and daggers, and they drove with them a four-pony sledge, with which to take home their game. Much as Polaris would have liked to take with him the seven dogs, he did not, for he dared not risk the lives of the animals in the fierce sport. With the death of his dogs would die also his last chances of winning back on the way to the North. Some hours along the snow-path they discovered the first signs of the game which they sought, the white bear. The sledge was halted and the ponies outspanned. One of the Sardanian hunters was left to keep the camp, and the rest of the party set out on the fresh trail. Less than a mile away across the snow hummocks they came in sight of their quarry, a magnificent specimen of the king of the pole lands, sleek and fat and powerful from the good feeding he had found in the temperate vicinity of the smoky hills. "There is the bear. Now, stranger of the snows, how dost thou take him?" said Morolas. "I understand that thou hast taken many of his kind single-handed--unless indeed that necklace of thine was plucked from dead bones." Paying no attention whatever to the open sneer in the words of the prince, Polaris made his preparation. He was too much pleased with the prospect of the action before him to be nettled by the peevishness of the Sardanian prince. Smilingly he loosened the long knife in his belt, took a firm grip of his spear, one of his own steel-bladed shafts, and crept forward across the snows where the monster awaited the coming of the foe.