"Mum, Elster! Mum! I neither bought them nor sought them. They were sent as a present to our boy by some one, who said that he was one of Sprigg's very best friends; and that he could not do a better part by our boy and ourselves, too, than to let him have them and wear them, a little experience being all that he needed to disenchant him of his fancy. 'Our boy's case,' said he, 'was like a man's case, whose heart is set on matrimony—a little lively experience being all that was needed to cure him of his hankering and set him right with matrimony, so with moccasins.' Quoting, Elster; understand me, now, only quoting: Thirteen years of lively experience, and here am I, just as far from being cured as I was the day we went to the show, and your case every whit as desperate. But here stands the boy like one bewitched. Sprigg!"
The boy giving a big start, the spell, which the moccasins, or his own fancy, or, it were hard to say what, had thrown upon him, was snapped in a twinkle, and recovering the use of his tongue, he cried out: "Let me try them on! Let me try them on!" and on they were in a trice. "Look, look! Do but see how nicely they fit! Oh, what beautiful shoes!" And the boy began dancing about the room in a fashion so fantastic as were enough to make one fancy that what he had on his feet were medicine moccasins, which could carry him whithersoever and in what manner soever might please him, or might please them. In the extravagance of his delight he ran up to Pow-wow, where he sat on the hearth, and gave him an affectionate hug; then, taking the old dog's paws in his hand and shaking it heartily, said: "How are you, old pard, and did you bring your Sprigg the red moccasins? Yes, that you did, and you shall have a good meat-bone for it, too; that you shall." And going to the cupboard, like old Mother Hubbard, to get the poor dog a bone, Sprigg found there three ribs of a bear, and so the poor dog had plenty.
"Sprigg," said Elster, in a grieved and reproachful voice, "are all your thanks for the dog? Have you none for pap? Poor pap, who has been gone so long and traveled so far, and has come home so weary, and has been so kind to bring you the moccasins, which, of all things else, you have most desired! Shame upon you! Who would have thought that our boy could have shown himself so thankless!"
Sprigg stopped short in his capers; looked first at his mother and then at his father, and, perceiving that pap also seemed hurt and grieved, he hung his head, but not this time to look at the moccasins. It was to hide the blush of shame, which, redder than they, burst up from his heart and burned in his cheek—the first that had ever been seen there. They had hardly observed the change and wondered thereat when the boy burst into tears, and drawing off the moccasins crept back to bed. Nor could they get another word out of him that night, though they tried hard to do so—harder, indeed, than was wise. So, at last they gave it up and allowed him to sob himself to sleep.
But all night long, to and fro and up and down, were the red moccasins walking about in his dreams. Sometimes he felt as if they were treading upon his naked heart and brain, as though feet were in them—cruel feet, which took a delight in trampling upon him, and once or twice it seemed to him as if some wild and fearful shape of the night were clutching at his toes, when he had cried out in a fright: "Oh! the red moccasins! How they hurt my feet!"