But Sprigg's heart was too full of red moccasins for the laughing gladness of the green fields, or the smiling delight of the blue sky, to find any place there. What his mother had told him of the wild shapes which haunted the forest had, for the time, caused his heart, bold as it was for one of his years, to quake with a nameless dread, which seemed to dog his shadow wherever he went. When the shades of night and the hours of sleep were come, these wild remembrances took the form of wilder dreams, which vexed and scared his slumbers till break of day. But next day was the first of June; and the sun was too bright, and the sky too blue, and the earth too green, for ugly dreams to linger long in the mind, and by the time the shadows stood still at noon Nick of the Woods, chasing Indians, hugging bears and the like terrors of the forest were remembered only as frightful pictures seen in a book. Sprigg had dined; and a healthy young cub of a bear never cleaned out a hive of honey with a keener appetite than our hero his bowl of milk and bread. For the seventh time that day he had looked at and tried on the moccasins, just to reassure himself that they were made for his feet and nobody else's, and to take a few quiet turns in them about the room, just to see if they felt as easy as they fitted well. Now, with greater liveliness and earnestness than ever, his thoughts returned to the matter he had so near at heart; nor would they let him rest until he had answered the question which, for the seventh time that day, he had put to himself: "Shall I on with the moccasins and go to grandpap's house to-day?" The good voice in his heart said: "No, Sprigg! No! Don't you do it! Don't even think of such a thing! It is not mam's wish; it is not pap's wish, that you should venture so far away, through the wild and dangerous woods all alone! It would vex and grieve them a thousand times more than it could possibly gratify you. So stay at home, Sprigg; stay at home, and have a care how you let red moccasins tempt you astray! Wait, like a good boy, until you can go with pap and mam to grandmam's quilting." But quickly spoke up the bad voice in his heart and said: "Go, Sprigg! Go! By all means go, and a delightful time you shall have of it--be sure of that. The old folks won't care so much--not so very much! When did they care so very much for anything you had done, even though it might not have been exactly right. So up and away to grandpap's house! and never a fear that a pair of red moccasins could take you anywhere it pleased you not to go."