ead. That was a bitter
suffering to him; he could feel it there. He knew that it was stretching
its long arms into the air and waving its branches in the wind. He knew
that its roots grappled his body and grew tighter fixed in the earth.
The tree, indeed, died in time, but another took its place and the
torment grew with it. For it kept in his mind the Squirrel he had
killed. He could stolidly bear the crushing weight of the rock bringing
remorse at the recollection of the happy river that he had made an
angry brawling stream,--but the tree--it was a birch, the very kind that
he had first devoured after the death of his mother, the tree, that
moving with every breath of air, stirred in his mind the recollection of
the Squirrel he had killed, who had loved him, saved him from death, and
died beside for love of the river--the tree he thought he could not
bear.

But still through all his remorse and bitter anguish, the Elephant
seemed to hear, though faintly, the last words spoken:

"But not forever. A Deliverer shall come, and thou shalt mount the sky
and dwell among the stars."

This was the only slight ray of comfort, though he did not always
remember it, but still when the morning sun arose and its beams fell
upon the rock, it awakened the remembrance in the Elephant's mind, and
he repeated to himself, "A Deliverer shall come." And sometimes in the
deep and still night, the Aurora flushing in the north would lighten up
a deeper and more cheering hope, for by it he thought would the
Deliverer come.

But though the Deliverer has not yet come, still some small comfort does
the Elephant have. For the gentle mosses have grown over his stony body;
the mosses on the river bank he had terrified and roughly beaten with
the jagged rocks. Now did these spread themselves over him, covering him
with green verdure and gladdening his soul with the love they gave him.
The tree, too, drops yearly its leaves upon his back, and the roots,
though they hug him closer, seem to him to do it more lovingly and not
with the old terrible gripe.

Yes, all these things make him mindful of the Deliverer. He knows not in
what form he will come, but I will tell you. A Squirrel shall finally
gnaw away the roots of the tree and it will fall never to rise again.
The river, turning its course, shall flow over and about him, and its
constant washing shall wear away the rock. The rocky covering gone, in
the night, the deep and still night, the Aurora