Their bodies were tanned
brown by sun and wind, and streaked and splotched with the blue and
red stain of berry juice. They were jabbering contentedly and both
were as plump and happy in their foraging as a pair of young cubs.
Snow had begun to fall before Doctor Grenfell followed by the two lads
returned to the fire at the cliff, soon to be joined by the boys'
father, tall, gaunt and bearded. His hair, untrimmed for many weeks,
was long and snarled. He was nearly barefooted and his clothing hung
in tatters. In one hand he carried a rusty old trade gun, (a
single-barreled, old-fashioned muzzle loading shotgun), in the other
he clutched by its wing a gull that he had recently shot. Following
the father came an older lad, perhaps fourteen years of age, little
better clothed than his two brothers and as wild and unkempt in
appearance as the father.
"Evenin'," greeted the man, as he leaned his gun against the cliff and
dropped the gull by its side.
It was cold. The now thickly falling snow spoke loudly of the Arctic
winter so near at hand. The liveyere and his family, however, seemed
not to feel or mind the chill in the least, and apparently gave no
more thought to the morrow or the coming winter, upon whose frigid
threshold they stood, than did the white-winged gulls flying low over
the water.
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