rst person in every company. "Larger than any of you;
in my present size it's hardly worth my while to go into the water."

"Yes, yes!" said they. "By and by, when we get into the lodge it shall
be done."

They all dived into the lake, and in passing great heaps of limbs and
logs at the bottom, he asked the use of them; they answered, "It is for
our winter's provisions."

When they all got into the lodge their number was about one hundred. The
lodge was large and warm.

"Now we will make you large," said they. "Will _that_ do?"

"Yes," he answered; for he found that he was ten times the size of the
largest.

"You need not go out," said the others; "we will bring you food into
the lodge, and you will be our chief."

"Very well," Grasshopper answered. He thought, "I will stay here and
grow fat at their expense." But, soon after, one ran into the lodge, out
of breath, crying out, "We are visited by the Indians!"

All huddled together in great fear. The water began to lower, for the
hunters had broken down the dam, and they soon heard them on the roof of
the lodge, breaking it up. Out jumped all the beavers into the water,
and so escaped.

Grasshopper tried to follow them; but, unfortunately, to gratify his
ambition, they had made him so large that he could not creep out at the
hole. He tried to call them back, but either they did not hear or would
not attend to him; he worried himself so much in searching for a door to
let him out, that he looked like a great bladder, swollen and blistering
in the sun, and the sweat stood out upon his forehead in knobs and huge
bubbles.

Although he heard and understood every word that the hunters spoke--and
some of their expressions suggested terrible ideas--he could not turn
himself back into a man. He had chosen to be a beaver, and a beaver he
must be. One of the hunters, a prying little man, with a single lock
dangling over one eye--this inquisitive little fellow put his head in at
the top of the lodge. "_Ty-au!_" cried he. "_Tut ty-au!_
Me-shau-mik--king of beavers is in." Whereupon the whole crowd of
hunters began upon him with their clubs, and knocked his scull about
until it was no harder than a morass in the middle of summer.
Grasshopper thought as well as ever he did, although he was a beaver;
and he felt that he was in a rather foolish scrape, inhabiting the
carcass of a beaver.

Presently seven or eight of the hunters hoisted his body upon long
poles, and marched