“Listen, and I will tell you,” said Qalagánguasê, who already felt his strength returning. “The house has been full of people, and they made the night pass pleasantly for me, and now, they say, I am to grow strong again.”
But hardly had the boy said these words, when the strength slowly began to leave him.
“Qalagánguasê is to be challenged to a singing contest,” he heard them say, as he lay there. And then they tied the boy to the frame post and let him swing backwards and forwards, as he tried to beat the drum. After that, they all made ready, and set out for their singing contest, and left the lame boy behind in the house all alone. And there he lay all alone, when his mother, who had died long since, came in with his father.
“Why are you here alone?” they asked.
“I am lame,” said the boy, “and when the others went off to a singing contest, they left me behind.”
“Come away with us,” said his father and mother.
“It is better so, perhaps,” said the boy.
And so they led him out, and bore him away to the land of ghosts, and so Qalagánguasê became a ghost.
And it is said that Qalagánguasê became a woman when they changed him to a ghost. But his fellow-villagers never saw him again.