? She is doing no such
thing," said they.

"Come and see for yourselves! Come, quick!" he cried, very much
excited.

Sure enough! Up she was going at a rapid rate.

The boy caught up his sealskin breeches and, being in a hurry, thrust
one leg into them and then drew a deerskin sock on the other foot as
he ran outside. There he saw the girl far away up in the sky and began
at once to go up the ladder toward her; but she floated away, he
following in turn.

The girl became the sun and the boy became the moon, and ever since
that time he pursues but never overtakes her. At night the sun sinks
in the west, and the moon is seen coming up in the east to go circling
after, but always too late. The moon, being without food, wanes slowly
away from starvation until it is quite lost to sight; then the sun
reaches out and feeds it from the dish in which she carried food to
the kashim. After the moon is fed and gradually brought to the full,
it is permitted to starve again, thus producing the waxing and waning
which we see every month.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Probably the Milky Way.

XXIII

CHUNKS OF DAYLIGHT

At the northern part of the continent, in the land of the midnight
sun, where in the long summer days the sun at midnight is just
slipping below the northern horizon and immediately is seen coming up
again, and where in the long nights of winter there is scarcely any
daytime at all, it is not strange that the legends of the people often
treat of daylight and especially of darkness. The long nights become
oppressive, and the people have different theories as to the cause of
it, which they weave into legends such as the following.

In the days when the earth was a child, there was light from the sun
and moon as there is now. Then the sun and moon were taken away and
the people were left for a long time with no light but the shining of
the stars. The shamans, or priests, made their strongest charms to no
purpose, for the darkness of night continued.

In a village of the lower Yukon there lived an orphan boy who always
sat upon the bench with the humble people, over the entrance way of
the kashim or assembly house. The other people thought he was foolish,
and he was despised and ill-treated by everyone. After the shamans had
tried very hard to bring back the sun and moon and had failed, the boy
began to ridicule them.

"What fine shamans you must be, not to be able to bring back the
light, when even I can do i