And Sprigg--poor child! How weak and helpless to be in a spot so lonely and dreary and perilous, and so far away from the dear old hearts of home! Hearts, by this time, so overburdened with grief and distressing apprehensions--all for him! How weary, too, and faint he felt! And how he longed to lay him down to sleep and be at rest! But this, he dared not, lest he should awake but to find long, sharp horns at his breast, or long, sharp teeth at his throat. Or, if not this, he might, while yet asleep, be borne away to some spot, still more distant and lonely, by the strange being, who stood just there in the moccasins, the gaze of whose unseen eyes he now felt in his inmost heart. At last, in spite of all his efforts to keep awake, the weary child was dropping off to sleep, when his ear, as yet but half closed, was caught by a dog-trot sort of a noise in the leaves quite near at hand. Rousing with a start and looking out, the boy saw there a wolf--gray, grim and gaunt, with eyes that glared upon him through the dusky shades, like balls of red fire, rather than eyes. Sprigg was on the point of screaming again to pap for help, when he bethought him of the moccasins, and glancing down and perceiving that they had turned their toes toward the monster, he choked himself into silence. Though he still feared them, he had, by this time, learned to trust the red moccasins, and now felt assured that they would defend him against the wolf as they had done against the bull and the cat. Nor was he mistaken. Just as Wild Tray of the Woods would have made his spring and sprang on the boy, the moccasins made their spring and sprang on the wolf, driving directly at his ugly eyes, with a kick into each, which brought the red fire flashing out into the darkness. Back, with a terrified howl, cowered the monster, and spinning swiftly 'round, vanished like the bison and the wild-cat, with a blind leap over the precipice. But this time, when the moccasins came back, a voice came with them; a new voice, whose tones, gentle and kind, reminded the poor boy of his mother's, and thus the new voice spoke: