BEwSJ FICTION 291 



talk, for as they pulled the meat along, he heard one say, " Hurry up ; 

 father will soon come."' 



The next morning, after going a short distance, he hid himself 

 and waited. The time seemed long. At last the children came from 

 the log. and entering tiio lodge, closed the door. Then the father ran 

 up and went in himself, fastening the door after him. The moment 

 the children saw him, they began to cry. " Why do you cry," he 

 asked, " I am your father. Do not cry." At this they stopped 

 crying. Then he said, " You will stay here with me." As he had 

 overheard them calling him father, he asked, " How do you know 

 that I am your father?" As he questioned them, sitting by the 

 fire, he on one side and the two children together on the other, one 

 of them, who was slightly larger than the other, said : " Your uncle 

 came over here and killed our mother, cutting off her head and her 

 breasts. Then he threw her intestines into a hollow log. We were 

 among the intestines, and as the breasts were there, we drew milk 

 from them and so were able to live. Her head is there with us now. 

 As the boy answered readily, the father asked him what they did 

 with the meat they took from the lodge. " We come," said the boy,. 

 " to get the meat to feed our mother." The father said, " You must 

 now live with me." He then made little ball clubs and a ball for 

 them to play with in the dooryard; he was so kind that they were 

 willing to stay. 



AVhenever their father went hunting they would go and feed their 

 mother. Once when the father came home, one of the boys said 

 to him, " Our mother is very hungry, for we have not fed her today." 

 The father replied: "Feed her; give her all she will take. I have 

 no objection. As you know, we always have plenty of meat, so 

 you may take as much as you please to feed your mother." He 

 was very kind to the children, because he loved them, and to keep 

 them from running away, he let them do as they liked with what 

 was in the lodge. He soon discovered, however, that his stock of 

 meat was disappearing very fast, faster than he could bring in more. 

 This continued until he began to feel discouraged and frightened. 

 The boy said to his father when the latter returned one day, " My 

 mother eats all the time," telling how much she ate, and asked his 

 father to go and see her. The father went to the tree with the boys, 

 and on looking in, saw two great eyes in a skull from which the 

 teeth were projecting and the flesh had disappeared, and the bones 

 of which were somewhat bruised. 



The boys asked, "Now. father, what do you think?" "I am 

 afraid," he answered. " that after she has eaten all our meat she 

 will eat us." 



"Let us go to some other part of the world, so she will have to 

 travel far to overtake us," said one of the boys; '"we can not feed 



