"The brother was fond of climbing to the mountain top, and sitting there to look out over the broad lands which had belonged to his fathers for so many years. One night when the wicked chief was returning from the hunt, he saw, as he thought, in the dim moonlight, his brother sitting in his usual place. This was very near the edge of the rock, where a slight push might throw him over, and it came into the bad man's heart to climb up softly behind him, and, with a sudden shove, to send him down upon the rocks below. He gave himself no time to think, and in a few moments he had reached the quiet figure which was half concealed by a clump of trees, and, with a push of his powerful hand, sent it whirling over into the valley below."
"Oh, the bad, bad man!" said Bessie. "He was just like a Cain, and his poor brother who never did him any harm! I think that is a bad story."
"Probably it's not true, but just a fable," said Mr. Porter.
"Then they oughtn't to say it about the poor Indian," said Bessie, indignantly. "If he didn't do it, they ought not to make it up about him."
"And likely enough the man himself never lived," said Mr. Porter.
"Then they oughtn't to say he did," persisted Bessie; "And to make him so wicked too. There's enough of bad people without making up any more."
"Well, what was the end of it?" asked Fred.
"Just as the poor lost one went over the edge, a scream rang out on the night air, and the Indian knew it was the voice of his beloved wife whom he had thus sent to her death. The story goes on to say that he was so stricken with horror and grief when he found what he had done, that he wished the earth might open and swallow him, which it did, all but his head, which was turned into stone, and so has remained to speak of the punishment of his wicked deed."
"That tribe of Indians must have been giants then," said Harry, laughing as he looked up at the enormous mass of stone.
"Now I know that story never was," said Bessie. "People don't be turned into stone because they are bad, and nobody ever had such a big head, and people ought not to say it."