They soon saw that he was alive; he was moving. “Come, my son,” called his mother, stretching her hands to him,—“come, my son; come out, come to me.” But he stayed there, sitting under water.
A quarter of an hour later they saw that the boy had gone from the river. The people heard singing in some place between them and the village. They looked up and saw that the boy was half-way home and going from the river.
“That is your son,” called they to the woman.
“Oh, no,” said the woman; but she ran up and found that it was her son.
Another time the boy goes south with some children. These lose him, just as the others had. In half an hour they hear singing.
“Where is he?” ask some.
“On this side,” says one.
South of the river is a great sugar-pine on a steep bank. They look, and high on a limb pointing northward they see him hanging, head downward, singing.
They run to his mother. “We see your son hanging by his feet from a tree.”