One pleasant afternoon, as Ben Logan was ranging the wilderness, catering for his little sick friend, Nick of the Woods caught Will-o'-the-Wisp and Manitou-Echo amusing themselves at the young hunter's expense. They would set the trees and bushes to waving their tops and fluttering their leaves, where there was no wind; smoke to rising, where there was no fire; fire to burning, where there was no fuel; shadows to flitting and dodging about, where there were no visible forms; echoes to calling and answering each other, where there were no audible voices. Then would the elfish rogues fall to laughing and skipping about in the most extravagant manner to witness the big, young mortal's demonstrations of amazement: how he would open wide his eyes to stare this way, and wider still to stare that way; how he would cock first one ear, then the other, to listen; yes, and how he cocked his gun, too, ready to let fly the unerring bullet, the moment whatever it was--man, or varmint, or goblin--might dare to expose but so much as the head or tail of itself for a mark. "Imps!" cried the Manitou king, "let Ben Logan alone! There's nothing in the dreams of such a young mortal which calls for any of your good help. Were Ben a boy of a wild and brilliant fancy, say, like Sprigg, whose case we are putting through in a somewhat novel fashion, why, these pranks you are playing might not be deemed unseasonable, might even be approved; but you forget the nature of Manitou duty and go beyond the bounds of Manitou privilege, when you turn aside to bedevil a thoroughly honest human thing like Ben. To be sure, as I have just hinted, Ben is not a brilliant youth, nor shall ever be one, even though he should live to see his second childhood, and from that stage of mortal existence take a fresh start; nor is he likely ever to make a conspicuous figure in the world. What, though, does this signify to us Manitous? Such considerations, smacking, as they do, of human folly, are not the sort to influence the true Manitou way of viewing mankind, or the true Manitou way of dealing with human concerns. 'Tis enough for us that Ben is right-minded and true-hearted; that he keeps his dreams and fancies within beseeming limits, never letting them go gadding wide and loose from home; or, if he lets them go abroad at all, depend upon it, the ends he proposes to himself are well meant and unselfish, be they wise or simple. Therefore, it behooves us, as true Manitous, to treat this humble, honest lad with just as much consideration and respect as we were showing the boy Washington, some forty years ago, and are now showing the boy Tecumseh.