Panigwun entered the lodge, threw himself on the ground and began to lament. “Oh, my poor little brother! what will you do now?” he cried. “How will you live now that I have left you. You have not even the arrows to shoot game, for I carried them away with me. My poor little brother!”
He lay grieving for a long time, until the light faded and the stars came out. Suddenly he felt a light touch on his shoulder, and looking up he again saw the girl who had shown him to the lodge standing beside him. She laid her fingers on her lips as a sign for silence, and said in a voice as soft as a breath, “Mishosha is asleep. If we whisper he will not awaken, for the leaves whisper about him all night, and he is used to the sound. Down on the beach lies the magic canoe. Take it and go to visit your brother. Strike it on the side and say Chemann Poll and it will carry you wherever you wish. Only return soon, for if Mishosha awakens and finds you gone he will suspect me of helping you and punish me for it.”
Panigwun would have thanked the girl, but she had disappeared like a shadow in the night.
Stealing down to the beach, he stepped into the canoe; he slapped it on the side and uttered the magic words, and immediately it shot out over the dark and silent lake, and did not pause until it ran up on the shore from which Panigwun had waded that morning.
Panigwun leaped from it, and hurried up the beach to the lodge and looked in. By the faint starlight he could see his little brother lying asleep near the door, the bow clasped tightly in his hand. The older brother would have awakened him, but he remembered what the girl had said, and feared if his brother saw him he would not have the heart to leave him again. Very quietly he placed beside the child the sheaf of arrows, and also the food that the magician had sent to his wigwam for his supper. A moment he lingered, and then, as silently as he had come, he returned to the canoe, and soon was speeding back again across the water to the island.
But in the little while that Panigwun had been away the weather had changed. The sky was overcast, and the first breath of a coming storm ruffled the dark waters of the lake. He sprang from the canoe and hastened to his lodge. He had scarcely entered when there was a brilliant flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a crash of thunder.
In the silence that followed Panigwun heard the sound of feet running toward his lodge, and the next flash of lightning showed him the magician standing in the doorway. His face was drawn and haggard with terror. He ran to Panigwun and caught hold of him, and the youth could feel how he was shaking.
“Oh, my good Panigwun, you are not asleep, are you?” he cried with chattering teeth. “I could not sleep either. I came to see whether you were comfortable. Let us sit down and talk. I am not afraid—not afraid. I have had a curious dream, and I came to talk about dreams.” Again there came a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. Mishosha fell on the floor and caught the boy by the feet. “I have never done you any harm! Say I have never done you any harm. It is the storm king. He is mightier than I. He is searching for me. Ah!” A flash of lightning brighter than the rest filled the lodge with light. “Hide me! hide me, Panigwun. What I did to-day was only in joke. To-morrow I will take you back to your brother. I always intended to. Only hide me till this terrible storm is past.”
Panigwun took up a blanket and threw it over Mishosha, and the magician rolled himself up in it, and lay shaken and trembling with fear, groaning aloud at each flash of lightning brighter than the rest.
Gradually the storm died away; the thunder reverberated more dully among the distant hills; the lightning grew fainter; the terror of the storm was over.