“It is; come on,” said the elder brother, starting forward.
“Stiffen your feet with patience, I say,” again exclaimed the younger brother. “Know you that the old demon comes up the pathway below here? He will not hurt them until he gets them home. You know he is a great liar, and a great flatterer; that is the way the old beast catches people. Now, if we wait here we will surely see them when they come up.”
So, after quarrelling a little, the elder brother consented to sit down on a rock which overlooked the pathway and was within bow-shot of the old demon’s cave.
Now, while the girls were washing, Átahsaia ran as fast as his old joints would let him until the two girls heard his mutterings and rattling weapons.
“Something is coming, sister!” cried the younger, and both ran toward the rocks to hide again, but they were too late. The old demon strode around by another way and suddenly, at a turn, came face to face with them, glaring with his bloodshot eyes and waving his great jagged flint knife. But as he neared them he lowered the knife and smiled, straightening himself up and approaching the frightened ones as gently as would a young man.
The poor younger sister clung to the elder one, and sank moaning by her side, for the smile of Átahsaia was as fearful as the scowl of a triumphant enemy, or the laugh of a rattlesnake when he hears any old man tell a lie and thinks he will poison him for it.
“Why do you run, and why do you weep so?” asked the old demon. “I know you. I am ugly and old, my pretty maidens, but I am your grandfather and mean you no harm at all. I frightened you only because I felt certain you would run away from me if you could.”
“Ah!” faltered the elder sister, immediately getting over her fright. “We did not know you and therefore we were frightened by you. Come, sister, come,” said she to the younger. “Brighten your eyes and thoughts, for our grandfather will not hurt us. Don’t you see?”
But the younger sister only shook her head and sobbed. Then the demon got angry. “What are you blubbering about?” he roared, raising his knife and sweeping it wildly through the air. “Do you see this knife? This day I will cut off the light of your life with it if you do not swallow your whimpers!”
“Get up, oh, do get up, háni!” whispered the elder sister, now again frightened herself. “Surely he will not cut us off just now, if we obey him; and is it not well that even for a little time the light of life shine—though it shine through fear and sadness—than be cut off altogether? For who knows where the trails tend that lead through the darkness of the night of death?”