So they arranged robes to make a soft seat, and he went out to fetch her and came in again, but the people saw him alone. There was something like a shadow that came after. Wherever the young man went, this shadow could be seen to follow him. The shadow wife never spoke, at least not in the day time, but at night her voice could be heard plainly. The people in the house complained that it kept them awake. It seemed as if the two were talking and playing together all the night long.
There was a former lover of the girl who grew very jealous when her husband by his love brought her back from Ghost Land, and one night he hid himself behind their bed and suddenly raised the curtain. As he did so, there was heard a rattling of dry bones and then silence. In the morning the young husband lay dead, and the spirits of both went back to Ghost Land.
THE SELF-BURNING FIRE
One winter there was a great famine on the Copper River. The people began to die of hunger, first the children, then the old people, and finally the young and strong, until at last but eight men were left.
These eight men set out to walk to another village where food might be found, but they had not gone far when one perished of cold and starvation. They buried him and went on. Soon another froze to death, and a third lay down exhausted, and so on until only one was left.
Now this man felt wonderfully strong and walked on rapidly, notwithstanding he felt great sorrow at the loss of his comrades. Late that evening, he heard a shout ahead of him on the trail. He followed the sound and came to a great fire burning in the midst of snow and ice. Then he knew that it was the fire he had heard calling to him.
When he had warmed himself thoroughly and was about to start on again, he heard a crackling of bushes behind him. He looked back, and one by one his frozen comrades came up the trail and warmed themselves at the fire, followed by all the people who had starved to death in the village. This is the Self-Burning Fire which has mysterious power and is worshiped by the Indians.
THE LONG WINTER
It was almost summer time when some boys who were playing in a boat pulled out of the water a long piece of drifting seaweed and put it in again on the other side of the canoe. For this trifling, not only the mischievous boys were punished, but all the people in their village.