ed in a trial of
lifting, slipped and fell upon his back. "Ha! ha! ha!" cried the
lookers-on, "you will never rival Kwasind." He was deeply mortified,
and when the sport was over, these words came to his mind. He could not
recollect any man of this name. He thought he would ask the old man,
the story-teller of the village, the next time he came to the lodge.
The opportunity soon occurred.

"My grandfather," said he, "who was Kwasind? I am very anxious to know
what he could do."

"Kwasind," the old man replied, "was a listless idle boy. He would not
play when the other boys played, and his parents could never get him to
do any kind of labor. He was always making excuses. His parents took
notice, however, that he fasted for days together, but they could not
learn what spirit he supplicated, or had chosen as the guardian spirit
to attend him through life. He was so inattentive to his parents'
requests, that he, at last, became a subject of reproach.

"'Ah,' said his mother to him one day, 'is there any young man of your
age, in all the village, who does so little for his parents? You
neither hunt nor fish. You take no interest in anything, whether labor
or amusement, which engages the attention of your equals in years. I
have often set my nets[41] in the coldest days of winter, without any
assistance from you. And I have taken them up again, while you remained
inactive at the lodge fire. Are you not ashamed of such idleness? Go, I
bid you, and wring out that net, which I have just taken from the
water.'

"Kwasind saw that there was a determination to make him obey. He did
not, therefore, make any excuses, but went out and took up the net. He
carefully folded it, doubled and redoubled it, forming it into a roll,
and then with an easy twist of his hands wrung it short off, with as
much ease as if every twine had been a thin brittle fibre. Here they at
once saw the secret of his reluctance. He possessed supernatural
strength.

"After this, the young men were playing one day on the plain, where
there was lying one of those large, heavy, black pieces of rock, which
Manabozho is said to have cast at his father. Kwasind took it up with
much ease, and threw it into the river. After this, he accompanied his
father on a hunting excursion into a remote forest. They came to a
place where the wind had thrown a great many trees into a narrow pass.
'We must go the other way,' said the old man, 'it is impossible to get
the burdens