sked the head
chief.

[Footnote A: Thunder, also called the "hissing of the Great Serpent."]

Chenos answered, "He says the young woman must not be offered to him; he
wills her to live, and become the mother of many children."

Many of the chiefs and warriors were pleased that the beautiful woman
was to live. They wished to make her their daughter; but those who had
lost their brothers and sons in the war were not appeased. They said,
"We will have blood. We will have revenge for our sons. We will go to
the priest of the Evil Spirit, and ask him if his master will not give
us revenge."

Not far from where our nation had their council-fire there was a great
hill, covered with stunted trees, and moss, and rugged rocks. There was
a great cave in it, how great none of the Indians could tell, save
Sketupah, the priest of the Evil Spirit, for no one but he had ever
entered it. He lived in this cave, and there did worship to his master.
It was a strange place, and much feared by the Indians. If a man but
spoke a word at the mouth of it, somebody from within mocked him in a
strange, hoarse voice, which sounded like the first of the thunders. And
just so many and the same words as the man at the mouth of the cave
spoke, the spirit in the cave repeated.[A]

[Footnote A: The Indians think that echoes are the voice of a spirit.]

Sketupah was a strange old creature, whom the oldest living man of the
nation never saw but as he now was. He would have been very tall if he
had been straight, but he was more crooked than a warped bow. His hair
looked like a bunch of snakes, and his eyes like two coals of fire. His
mouth reached from ear to ear, and his legs, which were very long, were
no bigger than a sapling of two snows. He was, indeed, a very fearful
old man, and the Indians feared him scarcely less than the Evil One.
Many were the gifts which our nation made to Sketupah, to gain his
favour and the favour of his master. Who but he feasted on the fattest
buffalo hump? Who but he fed on the earliest ear of milky corn?--on the
best things which grew on the land or in the water? The fears of the
Indian fed him with the choicest things of the land.

The Old Eagle went to the mouth of the cave, and cried with a loud
voice, "Sketupah!"

"Sketupah," answered the hoarse voice of the Evil Spirit from the hollow
cave. Soon Sketupah came, and asked the Old Eagle what he wanted.

"Revenge for our sons, who have been killed by the Walkul