And so Father Messasebe, the mighty, the ancient, the abiding, called upon the spirits of the air, which are his kin, and upon the spirits of the earth, which are his friends, and these made cause. The small drop of dew, which hung upon the green beard of the wild rice-plant, dropped down into the hands of Father Messasebe. It did not tarry, as had once been its wont, upon the mossy floor of the wilderness, but hastened on. It met rain-drops shaken from the trees, these drops also hastening. The fountains, once slow and deliberate among the roots of the ancient forest floor, tarried not now upon their beds, but hurried on to join the dew and the rain in a great journeying. The ravaged forest gave up its springs. The brooks ran dry, and left barren the penetralia of the tamaracks and cedars. All these hurried on, little flow meeting little flow, and they joining yet others; and so finally a great flood joined itself to others great, and this volume coursed on through lake and channel, and surged along all the root-shot banks of the great upper water-ways. The floods passed on, making a merriment which grew more savage and exultant. The scarred and whitening trees stood silent, watching the waters pass; and the round hills smiled not as their feet were washed high with the hurrying floods. And when Father Messasebe at length came into the country where tall hills stood, neither did these hills protest, but joined in that which was now forward, and sent down red and gray and brown trickles of their own to augment the tawny waters. And then the country of low hills, which had no trees, sent out its sluggish streams also, across the deep loam-lands, to stain still further the once clean stream of Messasebe. And word went abroad that Father Messasebe had rebelled--word that reached the white-topped mountains far in the West; and these mountains, loyal, sent their white waters down until they, too, grew red, but still tarried not, and rolled on to meet the general stream. And the green mountains in the East, also loyal, sent their floods as well; until Father Messasebe, hating gathered all his armies, marched on and on, to make anew a wilderness of his own. Thus the floods came at length to a wide land covered with great trees, a land deep and rich, filled with all manner of growing and brooding things; a land of fat soil carried thither no one knows whence; a land apart and prepared. So Messasebe, having traveled many miles, came to a country inhabited by the slow snake, by the otter, and the beaver, the panther, the deer, the bear--many children whom he long had loved.