ned in peace. But one day the women came back with
baskets and picks and began to dig up these herbs and eat some of the
roots, putting others into the baskets to take home. The changed plant
was left standing when the women went home toward evening, but it had
seen the fate of its companions.

"This is not very safe either, for now I should be eaten. I wish I had
chosen some other form," it said.

Looking down, it saw a tiny, creeping vine clinging close to the
ground. "That is the thing to be," it said. "That is so obscure and
lowly that the women will never notice it. I will be a vine like
that."

Without delay it became a little squawberry vine nestling under the
dead leaves. It had not lived in peace and seclusion very long before
the women came and tore up many of the vines, stopping just before
they reached the changeling, and saying, "We will come back to-morrow
and get the rest."

The one-time grass plant was filled with fear, and changed itself
quickly into a small tuber-bearing plant like some that were growing
near. Scarcely had the change been made when a small tundra mouse came
softly through the grass and began digging at a neighboring plant,
holding up the tuber in its paws and nibbling it, after which the
mouse crept on again.

"To be safe, I must be a mouse," thought the changeling. "Animals are
a higher kind of being than plants, anyway. I will be a mouse."

Instantly it became a mouse and ran off, glad of the change. Now and
then it would pause to dig up a tuber, or would sit up on its hind
feet to look around on the new scenes that came into view.

"This is much more delightful than being a plant and always staying in
one place and never seeing anything of the world," it said.

While traveling nimbly along in this manner, the mouse observed a
strange white animal coming through the air toward it, which kept
dropping down upon the ground, and after stopping to eat something, it
would fly on again.

When it came near, the mouse saw that it was a great white owl. At the
same moment the owl saw the mouse and swooped down upon it. Darting
off, the mouse was fortunate enough to escape by running into a hole
made by one of its kind, and the owl flew off.

After a while the mouse ventured to come out of its shelter, though
its heart still beat painfully from its recent fright. "I will be an
owl, and in that way be safe," thought the mouse, and with the wish it
was changed into a beautiful white