"Yes, that have I; and a rare young buck he is. As antic at times in his capers as were he kin to an elf." "Has he not teased you much of late for a pair of red moccasins?" And pat to the question, the manikin thrust out one of his small moccasined feet. "And did he beg you to get him a pair while you were gone to the land of Pocahontas?" Jervis started. He had never given the matter a serious thought, there being no monkeys as yet in the country to create a demand for the article in question. After musing a moment he answered: "Yes, it is even so, though I must confess that the thing had quite escaped my memory. But granting it to be as we say, how does the circumstance interest Nick of the Woods?" "Listen!" replied the Manitou king. "I also have a son, who goes by the name of Manitou-Echo, until you white men christen him more to your fancy. Now my son Manitou-Echo has fallen in love with your son Sprigg, Sprigg being a boy more after his own heart than any young human being he has known for more than a hundred years. Of all fleet-footed fairies, Manitou-Echo, be it known, is the fleetest, and it is the chief delight of his existence to run races with fast boys. Sprigg, he says, is the fastest boy that has skipped upon the green earth since the days of Little Winged Moccasin, the boy who ran to the setting sun in quest of his shadow, which he had lost at noonday. So, then, my son Manitou-Echo is burning to run a race with your son Sprigg." "Well, and how is my son Sprigg to run this race with your son Manitou-Echo?" and the hunter crossed his legs, still with his chin propped on the muzzle of his gun, an attitude characteristic of hunters, from Robin Hood, in the cross-bow days of Merry England, to Daniel Boone, in the rifle days of green Kentucky. "True," rejoined Nick of the Woods, "Sprigg, with merely his own bare feet to go on, would stand but a slender chance in a trial of speed with Manitou-Echo. Therefore, to put him on an equal footing for the feat, Sprigg must be furnished with a pair of red moccasins such as we elves wear." And the elf again thrust out his moccasined feet, by way of exemplification. "But, while we shall be doing so much to please the whim of your son Manitou-Echo, what shall we be doing to please or benefit my son Sprigg?"