The story they told on their return—­for they did return and in good time for dinner—­was mostly Honnell’s, but I must admit that Swan could not be got to refute it.  As they approached the village—­some huts on a white hillside above a frozen lake—­a representative of the dog-colony came to meet them, waving his tail with an anti-clockwise circular motion impossible to the dog of temperate zones.  Having inspected them he escorted them on their way in a perfectly civilised and even courteous manner.

So far from being resisted, their entry was ignored save by the little fur-capped boys, who collected at their heels as if they had formed the vanguard of a circus, and the little brightly-kerchiefed girls, who bolted for cover.  All the adult male inhabitants, fiercely-bearded little men like trolls done up in reindeer-skin from top to toe, appeared to be engrossed in the manufacture of sleighs, although the village was already littered and cluttered up with them; and all the ladies were indoors sewing reindeer-skin into trousers or making tea.

Having exchanged a noise like “Sdrastetye” (which in these parts seems to mean “Bon jour”) with everybody they saw, our two friends sat on a log, and rested, while Honnell set about sketching, as he calls it, the primitive wooden church.  The little boys, of course, formed a sort of pyramid on his shoulders to watch.  Whether because his fingers were cold and so not completely under his control, or because the vibrations of the human pyramid communicated to his pencil some lucky jerks, the marks Honnell committed to (or on) his note-book were such as supplied the simple children of the snow with a clue as to his intentions, and he was intensely gratified to hear one say to another, “Tzerhof!”—­knowing that noise to signify “church” in the local tongue.

Swan, perceiving the moral damage likely to be done to his friend by this flattering incident, sought to puncture Honnell’s unhealthy pride by saying, “Plaho?” (or “bad”) as a suggestion to the critics; but this only caused them to say repeatedly and with emphasis, “Dobra!”—­which was one of Honnell’s six words and means “good.”

Thus the mischief was done.  Honnell returned to his billet a man changed and as it were possessed.  To hear him talk now one would suppose culture had fled from the Temperate to the Arctic zone.  Of the Lapps’ habits and their houses he knows nothing, cares nothing; all his enthusiasm is reserved for the honesty and the innate artistic perception of their children.  So seriously has he been affected by this unaided and impartial recognition of the subject of his drawing that some of us wonder if he will not settle down amongst those who alone understand and appreciate him.  Returning home what can he hope to be?  At best a hero of the Relief Force.  But in his Lapp village he could imagine himself an Artist.

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