After walking a long time and meeting no one, he became tired and stretched himself upon a high green knoll where the day's warmth had melted off the snow. It was a charming place to lie, and he soon fell asleep. While he slept, the sun heat upon him. It not only singed his bird-skin coat, but so shrivelled and shrunk and tightened it on the little boy's body as to wake him up. And then when he felt how the sun had seared the coat he was so proud of, and saw the mischief its fiery beams had played, he flew into a great passion. He vowed fearful things, and berated the sun in a terrible way for a little boy no higher than a man's knee.
"Do not think you are too high," said he; "I shall revenge myself. Oh, sun! I will have you for a plaything yet."
On coming home he gave an account of his misfortune to his sister, and bitterly bewailed the spoiling of his new coat. He would not eat—not so much as a single berry. He lay down as one that fasts; nor did he move or change his manner of lying for ten full days, though his sister strove to prevail on him to rise. At the end of ten days he turned over, and then he lay full ten days on the other side.
When he got up he was very pale, but very resolute too. He bade his sister make a snare.
"For," said he, "I mean to catch the sun."
"I have nothing strong to make a snare of," objected the sister. But on his insisting, she brought forward a deer's sinew which their father had left, and soon made it into a string suitable for a noose. But the brother was not pleased with it; he told her that it would not do and directed her to find something else. She said she had nothing—nothing at all; but at last she thought of the bird-skin that was left over when the coat was made, and she wrought this into a string. And now the little boy was more vexed than before.
"The sun has had enough of my bird-skins," he said; "find something else."
She went out of the lodge, saying to herself, "Was there ever so obstinate a boy?" She did not dare to answer this time that she had nothing. Then luckily she thought of her own beautiful hair, and pulling some of it from among her locks, she quickly braided it into a cord, and, returning, handed it to her brother. The moment his eye fell upon the jet black braid he was delighted.
"This will do," he said, and he immediately began to run it back and forth through his hands as swiftly as he could; and as he drew it forth, he tried its strength. He said again, "This will do," and winding it in a glossy coil about his shoulders, he set out a little after midnight.
His object was to catch the sun before it rose. He fixed his snare firmly on a spot just where the sun must strike the land as it rose above the earth; and sure enough, he caught the sun, so that it was held fast in the cord and did not rise.