"Sprigg, this old hunting shanty, as you know, stands exactly midway between your pap's house and your grandpap's house. There's the road home; you know every crook and turn of it as well as we. You are free, perfectly free, to go that way if you prefer it; we shall say nothing, do nothing to hinder you; only, if you choose that road, you shall have to travel it without our good help, without our pleasant company, barefooted--ugly hills, cutting stones, scratching briars, piercing thorns! There's the road to grandpap's house--level and smooth, shady and pleasant! You may not know every crook and turn of it as well as you do of the other, that is true; but we do, so what's the difference? We can take you thither, be assured; and that, too, by set of sun, just at the time when Ben Logan, the bold young hunter, shall be coming home from the forest with the spoils of the chase; just as Bertha Bryant, the pretty little milkmaid, shall be coming home from the bluegrass glades with the cows. Then shall they see us and admire us--you and your beautiful shoes--admire us, fit to die--the boy of envy, the girl of love! Only, you must have a care, Sprigg, to keep your eyes clear of the red mist, else you will go agawking by them, as you did yesterday evening, when, off we are kicked again, like a pair of slip-shod shoes. "Yes, Sprigg prefers that road, and so do we; suits him better, suits us better, for we never turn back, nor does a brave boy! And Sprigg is a brave boy! Who said our Sprigg was not a brave boy? On with us, then, and away!" The boy was again bewitched. His old love had returned upon him with exaggerated force. He seated himself upon a stone, and placed the moccasins down on the grass before him, their eye-like beads all atwinkle, as with conscious light. Hark! What is that? Those mysterious sounds again, so like the murmuring, whispering voices, which had been haunting the air around him ever since his leaving home. Sternly. "Home, false boy! Home to your father-er-er-er-er!'" Softly. "Home, poor child; home to your mother-er-er-er!" 'Twas but the whispering wind, with leaves for lips. Only the murmuring brook, with echoes for words. Wind can whisper and wail; water can murmur and laugh. The boy took one of the moccasins in his hands, a thumb and two fingers on each side; yet still he hesitated--that terrible Manitou eye!! Might it not be as present in the depths of the sky above as he had seen it in the depths of the earth beneath, and at that very moment looking as piercingly through his secret soul? He was on the point of dropping the moccasins, when a jay-bird in the nearest tree before him, and a red-bird in the nearest tree behind him began chattering in a noisy, commonplace, wide-awake way, which made him laugh and say to himself: