grass glades
with the cows. Then shall they see us and admire us--you and your
beautiful shoes--admire us, fit to die--the boy of envy, the girl of
love! Only, you must have a care, Sprigg, to keep your eyes clear of the
red mist, else you will go agawking by them, as you did yesterday
evening, when, off we are kicked again, like a pair of slip-shod shoes.

"Yes, Sprigg prefers that road, and so do we; suits him better, suits us
better, for we never turn back, nor does a brave boy! And Sprigg is a
brave boy! Who said our Sprigg was not a brave boy? On with us, then,
and away!"

The boy was again bewitched. His old love had returned upon him with
exaggerated force. He seated himself upon a stone, and placed the
moccasins down on the grass before him, their eye-like beads all
atwinkle, as with conscious light. Hark! What is that? Those mysterious
sounds again, so like the murmuring, whispering voices, which had been
haunting the air around him ever since his leaving home.

Sternly. "Home, false boy! Home to your father-er-er-er-er!'"

Softly. "Home, poor child; home to your mother-er-er-er!"

'Twas but the whispering wind, with leaves for lips. Only the murmuring
brook, with echoes for words. Wind can whisper and wail; water can
murmur and laugh.

The boy took one of the moccasins in his hands, a thumb and two fingers
on each side; yet still he hesitated--that terrible Manitou eye!! Might
it not be as present in the depths of the sky above as he had seen it in
the depths of the earth beneath, and at that very moment looking as
piercingly through his secret soul? He was on the point of dropping the
moccasins, when a jay-bird in the nearest tree before him, and a
red-bird in the nearest tree behind him began chattering in a noisy,
commonplace, wide-awake way, which made him laugh and say to himself:

"Foolish boy! Thus to sit listening to water and wind, and the
lengthening shadows telling how swiftly the day is waning! On with the
moccasins! Up and away!" And on they were in a twinkling. But now they
were on, why was the boy not up and away? There he still sat, his eyes
fastened upon the red temptations, bigger with wonder than ever before!
The colorless beads, describing the arrow and heart, had grown, in an
instant, red as blood.

"Bleed, poor heart! bleed!" cried a soft voice close beside him. "Bleed!
or be to your mother forever a sorrow!"

"Bleed, false heart! bleed!" cried a stern voice close behind him.
"