"I heard the geese cackle.

"'_Honk! honk! honk!_'

"I got out of bed and lifted the curtain. It was almost as light as
day.

"Instead of two geese there were three. Had one of the neighbours'
geese stolen away?

"I should have thought so, and should not have felt disturbed, but for
the reason that none of the neighbours' geese had that peculiar
call--that hornlike tone that I had noticed in mine.

"I went out of the door.

"The _third_ goose looked like the very gander I had given Nathaniel.
Could it be?

"I did not sleep. I rose early and went to the crib for some corn.

"It _was_ a gander--a 'wild gander'--that had come in the night. He
seemed to know me.

"I trembled all over as though I had seen a ghost. I was so faint that
I sat down on the meal chest.

"As I was in that place, a bill pecked against the door. The door
opened. The strange gander came hobbling over the crib stone and went
to the corn bin. He stopped there, looked at me, and gave a sort of
glad 'Honk' as though he knew me and was glad to see me.

"I was certain that he was the gander I had raised and that Nathaniel
had lifted into the air when he gave me his last recognition from the
top of the hill.

"It overcame me. It was Thanksgiving. The church bell would soon be
ringing as on Sunday. And here was Nathaniel's Thanksgiving dinner and
Brother Aaron's--had it flown away? Where was the vessel?

"Years have passed--ten. You know I waited and waited for my boy to
come back. December grew dark with its rainy seas; the snows fell; May
lighted up the hills, but the vessel never came back. Nathaniel--my
Nathaniel--never returned.

"That gander knows something he could tell me if he could talk. Birds
have memories. _He_ remembered the corncrib--he remembered something
else. I wish he _could_ talk, poor bird! I wish he could talk. I will
never sell him, nor kill him, nor have him abused. He _knows_!"

MON-DAW-MIN, OR THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN CORN[27]

BY H. R. SCHOOLCRAFT.

This is the real Indian fairy tale of the birth of
Mon-daw-min. Readers of Longfellow will remember his
treatment of the same subject in "Hiawatha."

In Times past, a poor Indian was living with his wife and children in
a beautiful part of the country. He was not only poor, but inexpert in
procuring food for his family, and his children were all too young to
give him assistance. Although poor, he was a man of a kind and
contented dispositio