he mother
there came a sudden terror into the eyes of both the Dakotas. They
feared lest it was Double-Face come in a new guise to torture them.
The rabbit understood their fear and said: "I am Manstin, the
kind-hearted,--Manstin, the noted huntsman. I am your friend. Do not
fear."

That night a strange thing happened. While the father and mother slept,
Manstin took the wee baby. With his feet placed gently yet firmly upon
the tiny toes of the little child, he drew upward by each small hand the
sleeping child till he was a full-grown man. With a forefinger he traced
a slit in the upper lip; and when on the morrow the man and woman awoke
they could not distinguish their own son from Manstin, so much alike
were the braves.

"Henceforth we are friends, to help each other," said Manstin, shaking a
right hand in farewell. "The earth is our common ear, to carry from its
uttermost extremes one's slightest wish for the other!"

"Ho! Be it so!" answered the newly made man.

Upon leaving his friend, Manstin hurried away toward the North country
whither he was bound for a long hunt. Suddenly he came upon the edge of
a wide brook. His alert eye caught sight of a rawhide rope staked to the
water's brink, which led away toward a small round hut in the distance.
The ground was trodden into a deep groove beneath the loosely drawn
rawhide rope.

"Hun-he!" exclaimed Manstin, bending over the freshly made footprints in
the moist bank of the brook. "A man's footprints!" he said to himself.
"A blind man lives in yonder hut! This rope is his guide by which he
comes for his daily water!" surmised Manstin, who knew all the peculiar
contrivances of the people. At once his eyes became fixed upon the
solitary dwelling and hither he followed his curiosity,--a real blind
man's rope.

Quietly he lifted the door-flap and entered in. An old toothless
grandfather, blind and shaky with age, sat upon the ground. He was
not deaf however. He heard the entrance and felt the presence of some
stranger.

"How, grandchild," he mumbled, for he was old enough to be grandparent
to every living thing, "how! I cannot see you. Pray, speak your name!"

"Grandfather, I am Manstin," answered the rabbit, all the while looking
with curious eyes about the wigwam.

"Grandfather, what is it so tightly packed in all these buckskin bags
placed against the tent poles?" he asked.

"My grandchild, those are dried buffalo meat and venison. These are
magic bags which