say, there is no end to it. Nobody will ever know the end. Yet is
it a true thing. I have seen it. It is life."

For a long time he smoked on in silence, weighing the pictorial
wisdom of the white man and verifying it by the facts of life. He
nodded his head several times, and grunted once or twice. Then he
knocked the ashes from his pipe, carefully refilled it, and after a
thoughtful pause, lighted it again.

"Then have I, too, seen many pictures of life," he began; "pictures
not painted, but seen with the eyes. I have looked at them like
through the window at the man writing the letter. I have seen many
pieces of life, without beginning, without end, without
understanding."

With a sudden change of position he turned his eyes full upon me
and regarded me thoughtfully.

"Look you," he said; "you are a painter-man. How would you paint
this which I saw, a picture without beginning, the ending of which
I do not understand, a piece of life with the northern lights for a
candle and Alaska for a frame."

"It is a large canvas," I murmured.

But he ignored me, for the picture he had in mind was before his
eyes and he was seeing it.

"There are many names for this picture," he said. "But in the
picture there are many sun-dogs, and it comes into my mind to call