Part 9 (1/2)

So saying, the bear, with the look of one preparing himself for deep thought, and all unconscious of what he was doing, seated himself upon his haunches. Whereat, Manitou-Echo suddenly quitted his seat, when, with a swift, sleek slide down his charger's back, plump to the ground came Sprigg, still in a sitting posture, his straddled legs as nicely adjusted to the bear's broad rump as spur to heel.

”Bless a body,” cried the bear, glancing 'round at our hero, where he sat with his face all crumpled up for a cry; not that he was hurt in the least, but that Manitou-Echo and Will-o'-the-Wisp were laughing at him, as he could see (for he could not hear them) by the fantastic capers of their moccasins and by the lantern bobbing up and down. ”Bless a body!

But it had quite slipped my mind that the cub was on my back. There, now! Don't rub so hard, and save your brine for your sins.”

”He-he-he!” laughed Manitou-Echo, now aloud.

”Ha-ha-ha!” laughed Will-o'-the-Wisp.

”Ho-ho-ho!” Elfin laughter resounding now from every side. The boy looked quickly about him. To his astonishment, he found the floor of the cave, as far as the light of the bobbing lantern allowed him to see, alive, so to speak, with red moccasins, all dancing about on tip-toe, or kicking gleefully into the air.

”Hush, children, hus.h.!.+” cried Meg of the Hills, in a voice of gentle remonstrance. ”Do you not see how it hurts the poor boy to be laughed at? Hush, I charge you!”

The elfin laughter ceased at once. But straight, the void thus left was filled by a long, calf-like howl from our hero, who, now that he had found there some one capable of understanding what a human boy could suffer, must need give vent to his wounded feelings--laugh who would.

His lamentation had not reached the modulating point, when, from the hollow depths around, there came, first, a big buzz, then a hoa.r.s.e hum, and then a mumbling, rumbling, grumbling sort of a noise, which striking his ear as no empty echo, caused him to cut short his longest howl in the middle, to listen and glance about him.

”It's only a trick,” drily observed the bear. ”Our old house is in the habit of playing our guests, when they sing or laugh too loud.”

”Or, rather a fas.h.i.+on,” gently observed the bearess, ”our old house has of reminding us when it is time we were putting our weary guests to bed.

Here, Will-o'-the-Wisp and Manitou-Echo, show our young guest to bed, and be so courteous as to allow him the choice side, and charge the cubs not to crowd him or hug him, as he is an only child, and not accustomed to our litterish way of sleeping.”

So, with Manitou-Echo on one side and Will-o'-the-Wisp on the other, the young guest was shown, in quite a stately style, to bed. The bed he found to be as nice and snug as the cleanest of leaves and gra.s.s and the most velvety of moss could make it, and was already occupied by three or four young bears; while close beside it, ranged in a row, were three or four pairs of red moccasins. At first this circ.u.mstance struck the boy as somewhat curious, but on perceiving that Will-o'-the-Wisp and Manitou-Echo had kicked off their moccasins, and set them in the same row with the others, and now, in the likeness of two young bears, were lying side by side in bed, the mystery was made as clear to him as the light of Will's lamp, which still hung in the air where he had left it.

As Sprigg stood hesitating whether to turn in or not, Meg came up behind him, and with a gentle push of the nose against his back, said: ”There's your bed, and there are your bedfellows. So in with you, my stout one, and make yourself comfortable.” As he still hesitated, the bearess brought him a soft dab of her paw on his back with a somewhat stronger push, which left him no alternative but to turn in as he was bidden and make the best of it. Then, humming a low, lullaby sort of a tune, Meg went 'round the bed, softly pus.h.i.+ng up and smoothing down the gra.s.s and moss, all in a motherly way, which was so like dear mam that it brought the tears to the lost boy's eyes--the softest, the sweetest tears he had ever shed. He would fain have kept them back, but in spite of all he could do they would come stealing out and trickling down. But Meg was glad to see them, hailing them as precious indications that, hard as he seemed, there was still enough of human affection in his nature to encourage the hope that he might be easily won over to the side of love and truth.

With the blossom-like odors and the water-like murmurs still in the air around him, the little castaway was dropping off to sleep, when that voice, so like his mother's, which he had heard on the hill at twilight, came again to his ear, repeating the same words: ”You have but too much need of rest! Then, sleep, poor child, sleep!”

CHAPTER XIV.

The Manitou Voices.

It was the hour when good boys, with cheerful hearts and innocent thoughts, are wont to rise to the cheerful duties and innocent pleasures of the day, that Sprigg was awakened from a sweet dream of home by a voice close beside him, which came to him like his mother's gentle morning call. He opened his eyes, but could see nothing, save a dense, red mist, bright and luminous, yet as impenetrable to sight as the blackest darkness. But when, on reaching out his hand, he had felt the moss and gra.s.s of the bed he lay on, and the hairy coats of the bears he lay with, then knew he but too well that his sweet thoughts of home--his mother's gentle morning call, his father's jolly laugh, and Pow-wow's loud, heroic bark--were all an empty dream. And yet, hardly more a.s.sured was he that what his senses were insisting on telling him were not things just as empty and unsubstantial.

What the voice was saying when it woke him, the boy could not recall, but it left a feeling in his heart as if pitying tenderness had been the burden of the words it had spoken. Tones were still lingering in his ear, and with effect so soothing that he should probably have fallen asleep again; but in answer to it he heard another voice, so abrupt and stern that he started up wide awake, and, in an instant, was all attention. What pa.s.sed between the invisible speakers, whom we shall distinguish as the ”Stern Voice” and the ”Soft Voice,” ran, word for word, as follows:

Stern Voice. ”He must run the Manitou race.”

Soft Voice. ”Is that terrible ordeal his only chance?”

Stern Voice. ”It is. Though so young, his heart is already so proud and deceitful and hard that we must all but break it, to bring it to the good for which it is destined, and of which it is capable.”

Soft Voice. ”But he can hardly as yet have strayed so far from good as to need so severe an experience for bringing him back. There were tears on his face last night when he fell asleep--soft, sweet tears--and there are fresh ones upon it now. May not these plead for him?”

Stern Voice. ”True, there is something of human affection in these tears. But apart from this, they are shed, not in contrition for the sinfulness of his course, but in grief for the pitiful plight to which it has brought him. Being the tears of self-pity, and not of repentance, they are not the kind to divert us from our fixed purpose--that purpose, our highest duty.”

Soft Voice. ”But, then, he is so young yet!”