And so all their legends were woven around these things and were full of strange incidents that had happened to them on their hunting trips. Many included adventures that had been related by their fathers and grandfathers around the winter camp fires years and years before. Let us imagine that we, too, are curled up comfortably on a deer-skin in a chief’s tepee, close beside the glowing campfire, whose flames cast a ruddy light on the circle of dark faces all about it, especially on that of the chief who, pipe in hand, is just about to relate some of these old legends of the American Indians. V. M. H. [Illustration] The Lost Giant Once upon a time, far back in the days when the elk, the moose, and the buffalo roamed over the hills and plains of North America, and little Indian children could call all the animals by name, there lived among one of the northern tribes a very unhappy little boy named Wasewahto. His mother had been a chieftain’s daughter, but she had died when the boy was a mere baby. His father had taken another wife, Wapiti--“the elk”--so called by reason of her large ugly head. Wasewahto’s father was dead now, too, and the little boy lived alone with his stepmother, who had no love for him and treated him very badly. He was too small to hunt and fish for his own food, and often Wapiti refused to share hers with him, giving him only a few bones to gnaw. One day she rolled up her belongings into a bundle and, without a word to Wasewahto, went away. Two days passed without a sign of her return. Then the little boy, hungry and frightened, sat down before his tent and cried bitterly. [Illustration: HE SWUNG THE CHILD ALOFT ON HIS SHOULDER] As he sat there sobbing and crying he felt the earth quiver beneath him, and looking up, he saw through his tears, a giant Indian who towered up to the very tree tops. “Why are you crying?” asked the giant in a voice like distant thunder. “Because I am all alone,” answered Wasewahto. “My stepmother has been gone two days and I have no food.” “You are the stepson of Wapiti?” asked the giant. The little boy nodded, and the giant continued: “Then she will never come back--she has gone to another tribe. Come home with me.” And he swung the child aloft on his big broad shoulder. Away they went to the giant’s wigwam, and there Wasewahto lived happily for many moons. But one night the giant had a dream, in which the spirit of Wasewahto’s father appeared to him, and told him to return the boy to his stepmother. The dream was so vivid that it troubled him, and he began to break camp the next morning, and prepare for a march. But when Wasewahto heard what his friend proposed to do, he cried and cried, and clung to the giant, and begged him not to go, but the big man was still worried over his dream, and insisted upon going.