"These Indians are an indolent people," the prophet continued. "They work only by fits and starts, but so am I indolent too. It befits our savage way of life," saying which, he put some coffee-berries into a sack and began pounding them with an axe. "I do not know--I do not remember to have been lazy; it does not matter now if I am. No one cares, and certainly I do not. I have tramped these mountains in all weathers; I have undergone all manner of hardships, yet they said I could not be a soldier in the armies down south. Of course not--of course not; a humpback could not be a soldier. He is fit only to swear at. Men would laugh at a crooked-back soldier. _She_ could see nothing but my back. Ah--ah--it is past now. Men and women are not here to see my back; the trees and the clouds, the mountains and my dogs, do not look at my spine. The Indians say my back was bent by my heavy thoughts. The boy there has a straight back, and I hope he may walk among men. I will see that he does; I will give him the happiness which was denied me, and it pleases me to think that I can do this. I will create a happiness which the vicissitudes of this strange life seem to have denied him, saying, 'Weasel, you are to be a starved and naked nomad of the plains.' No! no! boy; you are not to be a starved and naked nomad of the plains. I have in my life done no intentional evil, and also I have done no intentional good; now this problem of the boy has come to me--how it reaches out its roots for the nourishing things and how its branches spread for the storms!" Having accompanied these thoughts by the beating of the axe, the hermit arose, and stood gazing on the sleeping lad. "Oh, if I had only had your back!--oh! oh! oh! But if only you had had my opportunities and education--well, I am not a god; I am only a man; I will do what a man can." When the boy awoke, the hermit said, "My son, did you ever make a gun speak?" "No; my father's gun hangs with his mystery-bag on his reclining-mat, and a woman or child dare not lay their fingers on it." "Would you like to make a gun talk?" came gently, but Weasel could only murmur. The new and great things of life were coming fast to him. He would almost have given his life to shoot a gun; to own one was like the creation, and the few similar thoughts of men; it was beyond the stars. "Weasel," said the man, taking up a carbine, and calling him by name,--which is un-Indian,--"here is a gun; it loads in the middle; I give it to you; it is yours." With which he handed the weapon to the boy.