said Rod. "Oh, I wish I were one
of you! I love this big wilderness, and everything in it, and it's
glorious to hear you say what you do!"

"You are one of us," cried Wabi, gripping his hand.

That evening, after they had finished their supper and the three were
gathered about the fire, Wabigoon said:

"Muky could tell you one reason why the Indians of the North are
honest if he wanted to, Rod. But he won't, so I will. There was once a
tribe in the country of Mukoki's fore-fathers, along the Makoki River,
which empties into the Albany, whose men were great thieves, and who
stole from one another. No man's snare was safe from his neighbor,
fights and killings were of almost daily occurrence, and the chief
of the tribe was the greatest thief of all, and of course escaped
punishment. This chief loved to set his own snares, and one day he was
enraged to find that one of his tribe had been so bold as to set a
snare within a few inches of his own, and in the trail of the same
animal. He determined on meting out a terrible punishment, and waited.

"While he was waiting a rabbit ran into the snare of his rival.
Picking up a stick he approached to kill the game, when suddenly there
seemed to pass a white mist before his eyes, and when he looked again
there was no rabbit, but the most wonderful creature he had ever
beheld in the form of man, and he knew that it was the Great Spirit,
and fell upon his face. And a great voice came to him, as if rolling
from far beyond the most distant mountains, and it told him that the
forests and streams of the red man's heaven were closed to him and his
people, that in the hunting-grounds that came after death there was no
place for thieves.

"'Go to your people,' he said, 'and tell them this. Tell them that
from this day on, moon upon moon, until the end of time, must they
live like brothers, setting their snares side by side without war, to
escape the punishment that hovers over them.'

"And the chief told his people this," finished Wabi, "and from that
hour there was no more thievery in the land. And because the Great
Spirit came in the form he did the rabbit is the good luck animal of
the Crees and Chippewayans of the far North, and wherever the snows
fall deep, men set their traps side by side to this day, and do not
rob."

Rod had listened with glowing eyes.

"It's glorious!" he repeated. "It's glorious, if it's true!"

"It is true," said Wabi. "In all this great country between