So, with Manitou-Echo on one side and Will-o'-the-Wisp on the other, the young guest was shown, in quite a stately style, to bed. The bed he found to be as nice and snug as the cleanest of leaves and grass and the most velvety of moss could make it, and was already occupied by three or four young bears; while close beside it, ranged in a row, were three or four pairs of red moccasins. At first this circumstance struck the boy as somewhat curious, but on perceiving that Will-o'-the-Wisp and Manitou-Echo had kicked off their moccasins, and set them in the same row with the others, and now, in the likeness of two young bears, were lying side by side in bed, the mystery was made as clear to him as the light of Will's lamp, which still hung in the air where he had left it.
As Sprigg stood hesitating whether to turn in or not, Meg came up behind him, and with a gentle push of the nose against his back, said: "There's your bed, and there are your bedfellows. So in with you, my stout one, and make yourself comfortable." As he still hesitated, the bearess brought him a soft dab of her paw on his back with a somewhat stronger push, which left him no alternative but to turn in as he was bidden and make the best of it. Then, humming a low, lullaby sort of a tune, Meg went 'round the bed, softly pushing up and smoothing down the grass and moss, all in a motherly way, which was so like dear mam that it brought the tears to the lost boy's eyes—the softest, the sweetest tears he had ever shed. He would fain have kept them back, but in spite of all he could do they would come stealing out and trickling down. But Meg was glad to see them, hailing them as precious indications that, hard as he seemed, there was still enough of human affection in his nature to encourage the hope that he might be easily won over to the side of love and truth.
With the blossom-like odors and the water-like murmurs still in the air around him, the little castaway was dropping off to sleep, when that voice, so like his mother's, which he had heard on the hill at twilight, came again to his ear, repeating the same words: "You have but too much need of rest! Then, sleep, poor child, sleep!"
CHAPTER XIV.
The Manitou Voices.
It was the hour when good boys, with cheerful hearts and innocent thoughts, are wont to rise to the cheerful duties and innocent pleasures of the day, that Sprigg was awakened from a sweet dream of home by a voice close beside him, which came to him like his mother's gentle morning call. He opened his eyes, but could see nothing, save a dense, red mist, bright and luminous, yet as impenetrable to sight as the blackest darkness. But when, on reaching out his hand, he had felt the moss and grass of the bed he lay on, and the hairy coats of the bears he lay with, then knew he but too well that his sweet thoughts of home—his mother's gentle morning call, his father's jolly laugh, and Pow-wow's loud, heroic bark—were all an empty dream. And yet, hardly more assured was he that what his senses were insisting on telling him were not things just as empty and unsubstantial.
What the voice was saying when it woke him, the boy could not recall, but it left a feeling in his heart as if pitying tenderness had been the burden of the words it had spoken. Tones were still lingering in his ear, and with effect so soothing that he should probably have fallen asleep again; but in answer to it he heard another voice, so abrupt and stern that he started up wide awake, and, in an instant, was all attention. What passed between the invisible speakers, whom we shall distinguish as the "Stern Voice" and the "Soft Voice," ran, word for word, as follows:
Stern Voice. "He must run the Manitou race."