ot see the gloss go out of his clothes, nor his
handsome features change back again into mud and snow and filth.
But still as she followed she came on rags and feathers and scraps of
clothing, fluttering on bushes or caught in the crevices of the
rocks. She passed his mittens, his mocassins, his _mitases_,
his coat, his plume of feathers. At length, as he melted, his
footprints grew fainter, until she lost even his track on the snow.
'Moowis! Moowis!' she cried; but now there was none to answer her,
for the Muck-man had returned to that out of which he was made."

Menehwehna ceased and looked at his daughter steadily.

"And did the Beau-man find her and fetch her back?" asked Azoka.

"The story does not say, to my knowledge; but it may be that Ononwe
could tell you."

Azoka stepped to the moonlit doorway and gazed out over the snow.

"And yet you love Netawis?" she asked, turning her head.

"So much that I keep him in trust for his good, against a day when he
will go and never return. But that is not a maiden's way of loving,
unless maidens have changed since I went a-courting them."

Netawis having led them to the tree, the young men fell to work upon
it at once. It measured well over ten fathoms in girth; and by
daybreak, their axes being light, they had hewed it less than
half-way through. After a short rest they attacked it again, but the
sun was close upon setting when the tree fell--with a rending scream
which swelled into a roar so human-like that the children ran with
one accord and caught hold of their elders' hands.

John, with Seeu-kwa's small boys clinging to him, stood about thirty
paces from the fallen trunk. Two or three minutes passed, and he
wondered why the men did not begin to jeer at him for having found
them a mare's nest. For all was quiet. He wondered also why none of
them approached the tree to examine it.

"I shall be the mock of the camp from this moment," he thought, and
said aloud, "Let go of my hands, little ones; there is no more
danger."

But they clung to him more tightly than ever; for a great cry went
up. From the opening by the fork of the trunk a dark body rolled
lazily out upon the snow--an enormous she-bear. She uncurled and
gathered herself up on all fours, blinking and shaking her head as
though the fall had left her ears buzzing, and so began to waddle
off. Either she had not seen the crowd of men and women, or perhaps
she despised it.

"Ononwe! Ononwe!"