ng-backed, hard-muzzled cub of
a human thing do I find him, too! Tough! Tough!"

"Then all the accounts we have heard of him are but too true," sadly
observed the bearess, whom the bear called "Meg."

"But too true!" echoed the bear, whom the bearess called "Nick."

Meg. "Is it really a fact, then, that his thoughts by day and his dreams
by night are so taken up with red moccasins that he is in a fair way to
make a monkey of himself?"

Nick. "Really a fact."

Meg. "A fact, too, that he had no thanks in his heart for the beautiful
moccasins, which his kindest of fathers gave him one night last week?"

Nick. "A fact, too!"

Meg. "A fact, also, that his thoughts are so wrapped up in the moccasins
that he has none left for his prayers?"

Nick. "A fact, also!"

Meg. "And, likewise, a fact that he sneaked off, like a spit-thief dog,
when his best of mothers had told him and told him, times and times,
that he ought not, and he should not?"

Nick. "Like--wise--a--fact!" slowly pulling the words, as if he could
hardly find it in his heart to testify to behavior so shabby.

Meg. "But, Nick," and she looked earnestly at her lord, as if hoping
that for this one time, at least, he would vary his affirmative echoes
just a little, "that slip of the tongue on the fence, which Manitou-Echo
reported to us--surely, now, you can't say 'yes' to that?"

But Nick said neither "no" nor "yes." He answered never a word! All mum,
he hung his head, and but for the hair on his face he would have been
seen to blush up to the very eyes.

Meg. "I spare you the verbal answer. I read it but too plainly in your
looks. Hard is it for us poor Manitous to imagine how a boy--a
Christian, human boy, who knows his catechism--could be so false to the
mother that bore him! Using the very breath she gave him to tell her a
lie! Then we can no longer doubt that, in addition to all, he did
actually curse the red moccasins, when he spurned them from him up there
on Manitou Hill. The beautiful moccasins he had so earnestly longed for,
and which had been procured for him at such cost, and had borne him so
bravely through wood and swamp, over hill and dale!"

Nick. "My dear, to give the round sum of the matter, it is all precisely
as Manitou-Echo has reported. But, if you need additional evidence to
set your doubts at rest, know, then, that the boy himself has made a
clean breast of it to me, and the two stories tally from beginning to
end--tally as nic