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PAGE 2

He Of The Little Shell
by [?]

This time the giant was so nimble in his movements that he had nearly reached home before the Shell, make the best speed he could, could overtake him; but he was just in time to clip another beaver’s tail before the sled slipped into the lodge.

The giant would have been a patient giant, indeed, if his anger had not been violent at these constant tricks played upon him. What vexed him most, was, that he could not get a sight of his enemy. Sharp eyes he would have needed to do so, inasmuch as he of the little shell had the gift of making himself invisible whenever he chose.

The giant, giving vent to his feelings with many loud rumbling words, looked sharply around to see whether he could discover any tracks. He could find none. The unknown had stepped too lightly to leave the slightest mark behind.

The next day the giant resolved to disappoint his mysterious follower by going to the beaver-dam very early; and accordingly, when the little shell man came to the place he found the fresh traces of his work, but the giant had already gone away. He followed hard upon his tracks, but he failed to overtake him. When he of the little shell came in sight of the lodge, the stranger was in front of it, employed in skinning his beavers.

As Dais-Imid stood looking at him–for he had been all this time invisible–he thought:

“I will let him have a view of me.”

Presently the man, who proved to be no less a personage than the celebrated giant, Manabozho, looked up and saw him.

After regarding him with attention, “Who are you, little man?” said Manabozho. “I have a mind to kill you.”

The little hero of the shell replied:

“If you were to try to kill me you could not do it.”

With this speech of the little man, Manabozho grabbed at him; but when he thought to have had him in his hand, he was gone.

“Where are you now, little man?” cried Manabozho.

“Here, under your girdle,” answered the shell-dwarf; at which giant Manabozho, thinking to crush him, slapped down his great hand with all his might; but on unloosing his girdle he was disappointed at finding no dwarf there.

“Where are you now, little man?” he cried again, in a greater rage than ever.

“In your right nostril!” the dwarf replied; whereupon the giant Manabozho seized himself by the finger and thumb at the place, and gave it a violent tweak; but as he immediately heard the voice of the dwarf at a distance upon the ground, he was satisfied that he had only pulled his own nose to no purpose.

“Good-by, Manabozho,” said the voice of the invisible dwarf. “Count your beaver-tails, and you will find that I have taken another for my sister;” for he of the little shell never, in his wanderings or pastimes, forgot his sister and her wishes. “Good-by, beaver-man!”

And as he went away he made himself visible once more, and a light beamed about his head and lit the air around him with a strange splendor; a circumstance which Manabozho, who was at times quite thick-headed and dull of apprehension, could no way understand.

When Dais-Imid returned home, he told his sister that the time drew nigh when they must separate.

“I must go away,” said Dais-Imid, “it is my fate. You, too,” he added, “must go away soon. Tell me where you would wish to dwell.”

She said, “I would like to go to the place of the breaking of daylight. I have always loved the East. The earliest glimpses of light are from that quarter, and it is to my mind the most beautiful part of the heavens. After I get there, my brother, whenever you see the clouds, in that direction, of various colors, you may think that your sister is painting her face.”

“And I,” said he, “I, my sister, shall live on the mountains and rocks. There I can see you at the earliest hour; there are the streams of water clear; the air is pure, and the golden lights will shine ever around my head, and I shall ever be called ‘Puck-Ininee, or the Little Wild Man of the Mountains.’ But,” he resumed, “before we part forever, I must go and try to find what manitoes rule the earth, and see which of them will be friendly to us.”