And the Reindeer Said: "I'm sorry for your pain, dear!"

"So you have never kept Christmas before," said he, pausing in his cheerful whistle, which he kept up under his breath like a violin obligato to his whittling of boughs; "and you don't believe in Kris Kringle and his prancing reindeers?

In this deposit M. Lartet picked up many human implements, such as bone knives, flattened circular stones supposed to have been used for sharpening flint knives, perforated sling-stones, many arrow-heads and spear-heads, flint knives, a bodkin made of a roebuck's horn, various implements of reindeers' horn, and teeth beads, from the teeth of the great fossil bear (Ursus spelaeus).

"One would say they were reindeers in a Lapland scene.

He has a team of reindeers.

"Joe Bellus he tol' me Santa Claus was only somebody rigged up t' fool folks, an' hadn't no reindeers at all.

Some of our Northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft.

In the eleven weeks we had changed dogs, reindeer, or horses more than two hundred and sixty times and had made a distance of five thousand seven hundred and fourteen miles, nearly all of it in a single sleigh.

The Reindeer was needed immediately for work far down on the Lower Bay, and Neil said he intended to run straight for Oakland.

So the chest went aboard, and in the middle of the afternoon we hoisted the Reindeer's big mainsail and cast off.

A great wall of fog advanced across San Pablo Bay to meet us, and in a few minutes the Reindeer was running blindly through the damp obscurity.

The three of us were peering intently in that direction, when the Reindeer struck with a dull crash and came to a standstill.

It was Yellow Handkerchief, the Chinaman whom we had arrested for illegal shrimp-fishing the year before, and who, at that time, had nearly sunk the Reindeer, as he had nearly sunk it now by violating the rules of navigation.

" So saying, Charley and Neil returned to the Reindeer and got under way, the junk towing astern.

This the heavy junk prevented, lumbering along behind and holding the Reindeer back by just so much dead weight.

Fast as the Reindeer could sail, the junk outsailed her; and to avoid running her down I hauled a little closer on the wind.

But the junk likewise outpointed, and in a couple of minutes I was abreast of the Reindeer and to windward.

The Reindeer was fully five minutes astern, and we continued to leave her astern as we beat up the narrow, winding channel.

Possibly seven or eight minutes later I heard Charley's voice as the Reindeer went past the mouth of the slough.

" It was all very flattering to me, but lying there, bound and gagged by my own prisoners, with the voices growing faint and fainter as the Reindeer slipped on through the darkness toward San Rafael, I must say I was not in quite the proper situation to enjoy my smiling future.

With the Reindeer went my last hope.

Three things, however, I distinctly remember: the first sight of the Reindeer's mainsail; her lying at anchor a few hundred feet away and a small boat leaving her side; and the cabin stove roaring red-hot, myself swathed all over with blankets, except on the chest and shoulders, which Charley was pounding and mauling unmercifully, and my mouth and throat burning with the coffee which Neil Partington was pouring down a trifle too hot.

Then, Mr. Punch, riding a reindeer at half-a-crown an hour.

And there wuz reindeers hitched to sleds, and the low round huts of the natives lookin' jest like the pictures in our old Gography.

An Eskimo who was going on a reindeer hunt, and found his aged mother a burden, took her away and laid her in an open grave.