g no monkeys as yet in the country to create a demand for the
article in question. After musing a moment he answered:

"Yes, it is even so, though I must confess that the thing had quite
escaped my memory. But granting it to be as we say, how does the
circumstance interest Nick of the Woods?"

"Listen!" replied the Manitou king. "I also have a son, who goes by the
name of Manitou-Echo, until you white men christen him more to your
fancy. Now my son Manitou-Echo has fallen in love with your son Sprigg,
Sprigg being a boy more after his own heart than any young human being
he has known for more than a hundred years. Of all fleet-footed fairies,
Manitou-Echo, be it known, is the fleetest, and it is the chief delight
of his existence to run races with fast boys. Sprigg, he says, is the
fastest boy that has skipped upon the green earth since the days of
Little Winged Moccasin, the boy who ran to the setting sun in quest of
his shadow, which he had lost at noonday. So, then, my son Manitou-Echo
is burning to run a race with your son Sprigg."

"Well, and how is my son Sprigg to run this race with your son
Manitou-Echo?" and the hunter crossed his legs, still with his chin
propped on the muzzle of his gun, an attitude characteristic of hunters,
from Robin Hood, in the cross-bow days of Merry England, to Daniel
Boone, in the rifle days of green Kentucky.

"True," rejoined Nick of the Woods, "Sprigg, with merely his own bare
feet to go on, would stand but a slender chance in a trial of speed with
Manitou-Echo. Therefore, to put him on an equal footing for the feat,
Sprigg must be furnished with a pair of red moccasins such as we elves
wear." And the elf again thrust out his moccasined feet, by way of
exemplification.

"But, while we shall be doing so much to please the whim of your son
Manitou-Echo, what shall we be doing to please or benefit my son
Sprigg?"

"Pat to the point!" quoth Nick of the Woods. "The very thing I was
coming to next--the main thing, indeed, which has led me to seek this
interview with Sprigg's father. I should hardly have come a thousand
miles out of my way, since set of sun, had it been merely to gratify
Manitou-Echo in an elfish whim. In brief, then, and in sweet earnest,
too, the object we have in view is intended mainly for Sprigg's own
good; and, as the means to this end, my son Manitou-Echo has sent, as a
present to your son Sprigg, a pair of red moccasins, to put him, as I
have just said, on