ONE night, after the cold-time was over, Gofa and Tig and his little brother Ban and his little sister Fearna and Sona the baby were in the hut waiting for Garff to come home from hunting. Gofa was making porridge for supper, and Tig and Fearna and Ban were waiting to have theirs, for they were hungry. By this time Gofa’s store of corn was low, and she used to put a handful or two of pounded-up acorns with the corn-meal when she made porridge or bread.
Gofa was stirring the porridge when she heard a noise outside the hut. She jumped up and snatched a club and stood ready to strike if there should be an enemy at the door. Then she called out:
“Who is there?”
Gofa Alarmed
“It is I, Tosgy,” said a voice outside. So Gofa laid down the club and pushed aside the stone at the doorway, and then Tosgy crept into the hut. Tosgy was not a strong man like Garff. He had had his feet frost-bitten in the cold-time, and he could not run and so he could not hunt. The people called him Tosgy because he had big teeth.
“See,” he said, “I have brought you a beautiful fox-skin—a fine one, a rare, fine one; and I beg you give me some meal for it, a little meal for my children. It is now five days, nay, six days since we have eaten bread. We have had naught to eat but the green buds and leaves that we have plucked from the trees and boiled—and oh, but they are poor stuff! There is no goodness in such food, and my little ones are ailing. I beg you take the skin and give me meal.”
Gofa took the skin and looked at it; and she said: