THE TWO OLD MEN OF THE ICE-LAND. 295 
the daytime), each in his own bed, placed on poles which reached across 
overhead—the attic of the wigwam. Their hair was so long that as they 
lay it reached down to the floor. The boy wentin. The old men awakened 
and asked him what he had come for. He told them he was sent by Piu- 
chunnuh to ask them to come to him. They asked him if he had no other 
errand. He said he had not. They knew all this before, but they asked 
the boy to see what he would answer. The boy offered to wait and show 
them the way, but they told him to go on back for they knew the way and 
would come alone. They told him they would be there that night; that 
they must wait until evening before starting, because they never traveled in 
the daytime and did not wish to be seen by anybody. 
So the boy started home, and as soon as he went out of the house the 
two old men got down out of their beds, and the noise of their alighting 
was like thunder. They shook out their long hair which reached to the 
earth, and put on their mystic garments, and prepared for their flight to the 
south. . 
But the boy sped on his homeward way like a humming-bird all day 
long, and at night he reached home. They asked him, “Did they let you 
in’? “Yes”, he said. ‘They were asleep in high beds placed on poles 
overhead, each in his own bed; and their hair reached to the ground. 
Their house was full of all kinds of food—acorns, pine-nuts, manzanita 
berries, grasshoppers, dried flesh and fish ; but there were no women and no 
cooking.” And he said further, “They will come to-night at midnight. 
When they come the assembly-house must be ready for them; the old men 
must be in it, and all must be silent anddark. There must be no light and 
no voice. If any light is made and any one beholds those two old men 
he shall die.” 
That night all the old Indians came together into the assembly-hall ; 
but some were on top of it looking and waiting for the two old men. A 
fire was made at one side of it, but when it burned low it was covered over 
with ashes lest it should give a light. 
That night the two old men left their home in the far north, in the ice- 
land. Their house was not like a house at all, but it was like a little low 
mountain. They came out of it and set their faces to the south, and they 
