THE WOLF BROTHER.
An old Indian hunter was dying in his lodge. The barks were lifted to admit the air. The winds of the seas came and revived him, and he called his three children to him and made his last bequests.
"My son," he said, "I am going out into the unknown life whence I came. Give yourself to those who need you most, and always be true to your younger brother."
"My daughter," he said, "be a mother to your younger brother. Give him your love, or for want of it he may become lonely and as savage as the animals are."
The two older children promised, and the father died at sunset, and went into the unknown life whence he came.
The old Indian had lived apart from the villages of men for the sake of peace; but now, after his death, the oldest son sought the villages and he desired to live in them. "My sister," he said, "can look out for my little brother. I must look out for myself."
But the sister tired of solitude, and longed to go to the villages. So one day she said to her little brother: "I am going away to find our brother who has taken up his abode in the villages. I will come back in a few moons. Stay you here."
But she married in the villages, and did not return.
The little brother was left all alone, and lived on roots and berries. He one day found a den of young wolves and fed them, and the mother-wolf seemed so friendly that he visited her daily. So he made the acquaintance of the great wolf family, and came to like them, and roam about with them, and he no longer was lonesome or wished for the company of men.
One day the pack of wolves came near the villages, and the little boy saw his brother fishing and his sister weaving under a tree. He drew near them, and they recognized him.