And the time came when the pony was no longer a pony, but a quiet heap of bones; and upon this sat the man who walked for the moon. Then did the strength go out of him, and he turned his sharp face to the South. He sang no more for many days, for his body was as a lodge in which a fair woman lies dead with no mourners around. And at last he wakened in a strange lodge in a village of strangers. * * * * * And it happened when the green things pushed upward into the sun again that a young man who seemed very old, for he was bent, his face was thin, his eyes were very big, hobbled back into the village of his people. And he went to a lodge which was empty, for the father with his frowning and the mother with her weeping had taken the long trail, upon which comes no moon and never the sun rises—but the stars are there. Many days he lay within the lonesome lodge. And it happened that a maiden, one whom he had pushed aside in other days, came into the lodge with meat and water. So at last he said: “I have sought and have not found; therefore will I be as other men. I will fill this lodge with a woman—and this is she. Henceforth I shall forget the dream that led me; I shall be a hunter of bison and a killer of enemies; for after all, what else?” And this he did. So all the village buzzed with kindly words. “The fool has come back wise!” they said. And as the seasons passed there grew the laughter of _zhinga zhingas_ in the lodge of the man who walked no more for the moon. But a sadness was upon his face. And after a while the dream came back and brought the singing. Less and less he looked upon the woman and the children. Less and less he sought the bison, until at last Hunger came into that lodge and sat beside the fire. Then again the old cry of the people grew up: “The fool still lives! He sings while his lodge is empty. His woman has become a stranger to him, and his children are as though a stranger had fathered them! Shall the fool eat and only sing?” And a snarling cry grew up: “Cast out the fool!” And it was done. So out of the village stumbled the singing fool, and his head was bloody with the stones the people threw. Very old he seemed, though his years were not many. Into the North he went, and men saw his face no more. But lo! many seasons passed and yet he lived and was among all peoples! For often on hot dusty trails weary men sat down to sing his songs; and women, weeping over fallen braves, found his songs upon their lips. And when the hunger came his strange wild cries went among the people. And all were comforted! And this, O White Brother, is the story of the fool who walked for the moon! VIII THE WHITE WAKUNDA HE was the son of Sky-Walker’s oldest squaw and he was born in the time when the lone goose flies (February). It was a very bitter winter, so that many years after the old men spoke of it as “the winter of the big snows.”