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He crouched down and pushed his cousin, saying, in a low voice, “Awake! awake! here are two young women.”

But he received no answer. His cousin seemed lost to all earthly sense and sound; for he lay unmoved, smiling, in the calm light of the moon. Wassamo started up alone, and glided toward the strange females.

As he approached them he was more and more enraptured with their beauty; but just as he was about to speak to them, he suddenly fell to the earth, and they all three vanished together. The moon shone where they had just stood, but she saw them not. A gentle sound of music and soft voices accompanied their vanishing, and this wakened the cousin.

As he opened his eyes, in a dreamy way, he saw the kettle near him. Some of the fish he observed were in the bowl. The fire flickered, and made light and shadow; but nowhere was Wassamo to be seen. He waited, and waited again, in the expectation that Wassamo would appear.

“Perhaps,” thought the cousin, “he is gone out again to visit the nets.”

He looked off that way, but the canoe still lay close by the rock at the shore. He searched and found his footsteps in the ashes, and out upon the green ground a little distance, and then they were utterly lost.

He was now greatly troubled in spirit, and he called aloud, “Netawis! cousin! cousin!” but there was no answer to his call. He called again in his sorrow, louder and louder, “Netawis! Netawis! cousin! cousin! whither are you gone?” But no answer came to his voice of wailing. He started for the edge of the woods, crying as he ran, “My cousin!” and “Oh, my cousin!”

Hither and thither through the forest he sped with all his fleetness of foot and quickness of spirit; and when at last he found that no voice would answer him, he burst into tears, and sobbed aloud.

He returned to the fire, and sat down. He mused upon the absence of Wassamo with a sorely-troubled heart. “He may have been playing me a trick,” he thought; but it was full time that the trick should be at an end, and Wassamo returned not. The cousin cherished other hopes, but they all died away in the morning light, when he found himself alone by the hunting-fire.

“How shall I answer to his friends for Wassamo?” thought the cousin. “Although,” he said to himself, “his parents are my kindred, and they are well assured that their son is my bosom-friend, will they receive that belief in the place of him who is lost. No, no; they will say that I have slain him, and they will require blood for blood. Oh! my cousin, whither are you gone?”

He would have rested to restore his mind to its peace, but he could not sleep; and, without further regard to net or canoe, he set off for the village, running all the way.

As they saw him approaching at such speed and alone, they said, “Some accident has happened.”

When he had come into the village, he told them how Wassamo had disappeared. He stated all the circumstances. He kept nothing to himself. He declared all that he knew.

Some said, “He has killed him in the dark.” Others said, “It is impossible; they were like brothers; they would have fallen for each other. It can not be.”

At the cousin’s request, many of the men visited the fish-fire. There were no marks of blood. No hasty steps were there to show that any conflict or struggle had occurred. Every leaf on every tree was in its place; and they saw, as the cousin had before, that the foot-prints of Wassamo stopped in the wood, as if he had gone no further upon the earth, but had ascended into the air.

They returned to the village, and no man was the wiser as to the strange and sudden vanishing of Wassamo. None ever looked to see him more; only the parents, who still hoped and awaited his return.