Meg. "I spare you the verbal answer. I read it but too plainly in your looks. Hard is it for us poor Manitous to imagine how a boy--a Christian, human boy, who knows his catechism--could be so false to the mother that bore him! Using the very breath she gave him to tell her a lie! Then we can no longer doubt that, in addition to all, he did actually curse the red moccasins, when he spurned them from him up there on Manitou Hill. The beautiful moccasins he had so earnestly longed for, and which had been procured for him at such cost, and had borne him so bravely through wood and swamp, over hill and dale!" Nick. "My dear, to give the round sum of the matter, it is all precisely as Manitou-Echo has reported. But, if you need additional evidence to set your doubts at rest, know, then, that the boy himself has made a clean breast of it to me, and the two stories tally from beginning to end--tally as nicely as our two tails." Meg. "What! Not to leave out those secret designs on--what did Manitou-Echo call them--the boy and the girl?" Nick. "Young Ben Logan and little Bertha Bryant." Meg, "Not to leave out his secret designs on young Ben Logan and little Bertha Bryant? The boy to lose his life for envy; the girl her senses for love--all because of the beautiful moccasins!" Nick. "Well, well, Meg, mum's the word just there. He's human, remember, and you know they say that 'Adam's fall made fools of all;' and so, with their tails up, here they come; and, with their tails down, there they go--in that respect resembling dogs, who, in their turn, acquired the habit from their human masters. But I am deviating, and I perceive that you are wishing to make some further inquiry. What is it, my dove?" Meg. "I was longing to ask if--what's his name?" Nick. "Sprigg." Meg. "If Sprigg has not manifested the deepest sorrow and repentance for what he has done to-day. Does he not mourn to think of the pain and distress which, by his most undutiful conduct, he is causing his dear father and his dear, dear mother?" Nick. (With a sad shake of the head.) "Not with heart-grief, I fear; not with heart-grief! He mourns over the ills which he has brought upon himself by his undutiful conduct, rather than over the wrong thereof, or because of the pain and distress which it must be causing his dear mother and his dear, dear father!" And again Nick shook his head, as were it a desperate case almost beyond hope. Meg. (With almost as hopeless a shake of the head as Nick.) "Ah, me! who would have thought it? Who could have thought it? Why, Nick, he is as bad as Robinson Crusoe, is he not?"