The Manito kept silent. Manabozho, however, made no attempt to open it by force. He waited a few moments.
"Very well," he said; "I give you till morning to live."
Grasshopper trembled, for he thought his last hour had come; but the Manito bade him to be of good cheer.
When the night came on the clouds were thick and black, and as they were torn open by the lightning, such discharges of thunder were never heard as bellowed forth. The clouds advanced slowly and wrapped the earth about with their vast shadows as in a huge cloak. All night long the clouds gathered, and the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared, and above all could be heard Manabozho muttering vengeance upon poor little Grasshopper.
"You have led a very foolish kind of life, Grasshopper," said his friend the Manito.
"I know it—I know it!" Grasshopper answered.
"You had great gifts of strength awarded to you," said the Manito.
"I am aware of it," replied Grasshopper.
"Instead of employing it for useful purposes, and for the good of your fellow-creatures, you have done nothing since you became a man but raise whirlwinds on the highways, leap over trees, break whatever you met in pieces, and perform a thousand idle pranks."
Grasshopper, with great penitence, confessed that his friend the Manito spoke but too truly; and at last his entertainer, with a still more serious manner, said: