t a short distance. She cried out, "A little
further off;" but he came nearer to the lodge, the rogue that he was,
and cried out in a low, counterfeited voice, to make it appear that he
was going away instead of approaching. He had now got so near that he
could see all that passed in the lodge.

He had not been long in ambush when an old magician crept into the
lodge. This old magician had very long hair, which hung across his
shoulders and down his back, like a bush or foot-mat. They commenced
talking about him, and in doing so, they put their two old heads so very
close together that Manabozho was satisfied they were kissing each
other. He was indignant that any one should take such a liberty with his
venerable grandmother, and to mark his sense of the outrage, he touched
the bushy hair of the old magician with a live coal which he had blown
upon. The old magician had not time to kiss the old grandmother more
than once again before he felt the flame; and jumping out into the air,
it burned only the fiercer, and he ran, blazing like a fire-ball, across
the prairie.

Manabozho who had, meanwhile, stolen off to his fasting-place, cried
out, in a heart-broken tone, and as if on the very point of starvation,
"Noko! Noko! is it time for me to come home?"

"Yes," she cried. And when he came in she asked him, "Did you see any
thing?"

"Nothing," he answered, with an air of childish candor; looking as much
like a big simpleton as he could. The grandmother looked at him very
closely and said no more.

Manabozho finished his term of fasting; in the course of which he slyly
dispatched twenty fat bears, six dozen birds, and two fine moose; sung
his war-song, and embarked in his canoe, fully prepared for war. Beside
weapons of battle, he had stowed in a large supply of oil.

He traveled rapidly night and day, for he had only to will or speak, and
the canoe went. At length he arrived in sight of the fiery serpents. He
paused to view them; he observed that they were some distance apart, and
that the flames which they constantly belched forth reached across the
pass. He gave them a good morning, and began talking with them in a very
friendly way; but they answered, "We know you, Manabozho; you can not
pass."

He was not, however, to be put off so easily. Turning his canoe as if
about to go back, he suddenly cried out with a loud and terrified voice:

"What is that behind you?"

The serpents, thrown off their guard, instantl