"I am going to our best spring, down yonder in the edge of the woods, to fetch dear mam a good, cool drink of water."
"Our boy will be a credit and a blessing to us yet, let the wiseacres predict as they will!" and Elster returned to her work with a glad heart, that her son, for once, of his own accord, had bethought him of doing a kind turn for his mother.
Sprigg sped down the hill till he reached the hollow in the edge of the woods, where their favorite spring, screened from the rays of the noon-day sun by thick, overhanging trees, came bubbling up from under a mossy ledge of rock. Here, in the dark, cool shade, he sat down on the ground to put on his moccasins. But why so trembled his hands? Why trembled he so all over? And why did he fumble so long at the moccasin latches? It was the guilt of that ugly lie, which he had sent back to his mother, and with which his mouth and heart were now all hot and foul.
"Quick! Quick!" There it was again at his side. That sound so like a voice. "Right and tight! Brave! Brave! Who said our Sprigg was not a brave boy? He-he-he!" And, while the voice was yet speaking, the moccasins seemed to adjust themselves, to his feet of their own accord. Now he was up, and now he was speeding away through the forest; his road, one of those buffalo-traces, which, in those days, formed the only highways through the wilderness; the road of all others to lead a young runaway wide and wild of his mark. Soon, too soon, was Sprigg—vain Sprigg, bad Sprigg, poor Sprigg—far out of sight of home, the one place under the pitiful heavens where the young and the aged, the weak and the helpless, the untried and the overtried, should look for happiness and peace and safety!
He fled with his face toward Sunset-land; but never once thought he of Little Winged Moccasin. Elster had often told her son of the little Indian boy, who ran to Sunset-land in quest of his shadow, which he had lost at noon-day. The legend ran thus:
"There was a Cherokee boy, who discovered one morning at sunrise what a long shadow he cast on the ground. Whereat, greatly delighted, he cried out: 'Look! look! see what a shadow I make! See what a giant I am!' But as the sun rose higher and higher his shadow grew shorter and shorter, until, at noon, it had dwindled to scarcely a span's length. Whereupon, he set up a loud lamentation, when suddenly a Manitou appeared before him, who wore on his feet a pair of winged red moccasins.
"'What grieves you, boy?' said the Manitou.
"'I have lost my shadow!' cried the boy.
"'Wait until sunset, and you shall find it again,' said the Manitou.
"'But I have not the patience to wait so long!' whined the boy. 'Could I but get there, I would go to Sunset-land, to live forever, where the shadows are always long!'