u, my Osseo,' he began. 'I have given back to you
your youth and beauty; and I have changed into birds the sisters of
Oweenee and their husbands, because they laughed at you and could not
see that your spirit was beautiful. When you were an ugly old man, only
Oweenee knew your heart. But you must take heed, for in the little star
that you see yonder lives an evil spirit, the Wabeno; and it is he who
has brought all this sorrow upon you. Take care that you never stand in
the light of that evil star. Its gleams are used by the Wabeno as his
arrows, and he sits there hating all the world and darting forth his
poisonous beams of baleful light to injure all who stray within his
reach.'

"For many years Osseo and his father and Oweenee lived happily together
upon the Evening Star. Oweenee bore a son to Osseo, and the boy had
beauty and courage. Osseo, to please his son, made little bows and
arrows for him, and when the boy had learned to shoot, Osseo opened the
door of the silver bird-cage and let out all the birds. They darted
through the air, singing for joy at their freedom, until the boy bent
his bow and struck one of them with a fatal arrow, so that the bird fell
wounded at his feet. But when it touched the ground the bird underwent a
great change; and there lay at the boy's feet a beautiful young woman
with the arrow in her breast.

"As soon as her blood dripped upon the sacred Evening Star, all the
magical charms that Osseo's father had used to keep his son and Oweenee
with him in the happy dwelling far above the earth were broken, and the
boy hunter with his bow and arrow felt himself held by unseen hands, but
sinking downward through the blue sky and the empty air until he rested
on a green and grassy island in the Big-Sea-Water. Falling and
fluttering after him came all the bright birds; and the lodge, with
Osseo and Oweenee in it, sailed lightly downward and landed on the
island.

"When the bright birds touched the earth, another change came over them,
and they became men and women once again as they were before; only they
remained so small in size--so tiny, that they were called the Little
People, the Puk-Wudjies. And on summer nights, when the stars shone
brightly above them, they would dance hand in hand about the island, and
sometimes in the starlight they dance there even now."

When the story was finished, Iagoo looked about him at the assembled
guests, and added very solemnly: "There are many great men a