accomplished, the moccasins, precisely as they had done
before, returned to their post; and the boy, precisely as he had done
before, hid his face in his coonskin cap. Nor even yet one word of
thanks for timely rescue from untimely end. Now, had you been in our
hero's place, you would have up and made friends with the moccasins,
there on the spot, for so kindly stepping in betwixt you and
peril--shaken hands with them as whole-souled fellows, with whom it was
to a bare-footed boy's behoof to stand on a good footing. But Sprigg was
the worst spoiled boy in the world; which, unless I am mightily
mistaken, you are not; and it still rang in his foggy young noddle that
it was all the red moccasins' fault that he had been brought to straits
so sad and desperate. Therefore, he owed them no thanks whatever for
helping him out, let them kick as they might. Such being the case,
Sprigg would not have made friends with the moccasins, had it been to
save their soles.

So, there sat the boy, with his face in his coonskin cap; and there
stood the thing, with its feet in the moccasins; and there flung the sun
his last red beams, then went his way, unrecking who wept to see him go.

Now, shade by shade, with foot as stealthy and soft as the furred paw of
the gray cat, came the gray twilight, creeping, creeping on. The hour,
when the gray owl, with a whoop, from his hole in the tree; and the gray
wolf, with a howl, from his cleft in the rock, come forth in quest of
their prey. And woe to the fawn! And woe to the birdling! strayed from
home for the first time, should the shadows of night, that tempt the
famished foe abroad, find him still far from the old one's side; for
chased shall he be, and caught up by the claws, or dragged down by the
fangs of the dread destroyer!

And Sprigg--poor child! How weak and helpless to be in a spot so lonely
and dreary and perilous, and so far away from the dear old hearts of
home! Hearts, by this time, so overburdened with grief and distressing
apprehensions--all for him! How weary, too, and faint he felt! And how
he longed to lay him down to sleep and be at rest! But this, he dared
not, lest he should awake but to find long, sharp horns at his breast,
or long, sharp teeth at his throat. Or, if not this, he might, while yet
asleep, be borne away to some spot, still more distant and lonely, by
the strange being, who stood just there in the moccasins, the gaze of
whose unseen eyes he now felt in his inm