The Red Moccasins

A STORY

By

Morrison Heady

Louisville, Ky.:
Courier-Journal Job Printing Co.
1901.

ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,
IN THE YEAR 1901, BY THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

THE RED MOCCASINS,

A STORY.

CHAPTER I.

Portrait of Our Hero.

Once, in the spring-green years of the good old times, when our great-grandfathers were great-grandchildren themselves, there lived in the land of green Kentucky a sprout of a man, some dozen years old, who went by the name of Sprigg. And "Sprigg," for aught I know to the contrary, was his real name; though it has so little the sound of a name, I sometimes wonder his father and mother should ever have thought of giving it to him, when any grandmother of common capacity for naming babies could have suggested a better one. "Jeems," for example, or "Weeliam." Be this as it may, "Sprigg" was the name to which our hero always answered, whenever addressed as cousin, or uncle, or friend; and which, before going the way of all good grandfathers, he left at the end of his will, where it was thought real enough, not only to make that instrument good in the eyes of the law, but his heirs highly respectable in the eyes of the world. We have no choice, then, but to call our hero "Sprigg," just as everybody else did; though were we allowed to christen him more to our liking, we should certainly call him Jack. Jack, in our humble opinion, being the fittingest name in the world for giving pointedge and moral force to a juvenile novel. Especially would we be allowed this liberty in the present instance, where the hero, whose fortune we propose to follow, is described as being of a wild and run-away turn, and, hence, well fitted to figure as a warning example to all dissatisfied youngsters, who not content to stay at home and do their sliding on dry ground, go seeking for ice on a summer day at imminent risk of getting drowned.

Now green Kentucky, in the days of Sprigg, was green Kentucky, indeed! Mrs. Daniel Boone and her daughters had not yet distinguished themselves by being the first white women who ever set foot upon the banks of the Kentucky River, when Sprigg was already a three-years' child, the joy and pride of a home in a hewn log house in western Virginia; as merry and saucy, and every whit as well pleased with himself as were he the rising hope and promise of one of the "F. F. Vs." The eight or nine years of pioneer activity which had followed the historical event just noticed, had made many a wide gap in the forest, yet had not changed the general aspect of the country so much but that the fields, as viewed by the eagle who sailed with the clouds, must have appeared no more than as the prints of man's feet, left impressed in the otherwise universal verdure. As you may well imagine, so wild and savage a region must still have been the home of a thousand wild and savage creatures, the like whereof we never dream of now-a-days, even in our loneliest woodland rambles. There, too, was the terrible red man, who, though he built not his wigwam in these wilds, made it his frequent custom of resorting thither, sometimes to follow the chase, but oftener to war with the whites, who lived in great terror of him the whole year round.

The Christian name of our hero's father, whom he called "Pap," was Jervis; the Christian name of his mother, whom he called "Mam," was Elster, and the surname was Whitney. They dwelt in a roomy cabin, rudely built of logs and boards, with a clay-topped chimney at each end, and a porch or shed on each side. Under the front porch Jervis hung his saddle, fishing tackle, beaver traps and the like. Under the back porch Elster kept her spinning wheel, crockeryware, garden seed, a big cedar water bucket, with its crooked-handle gourd, and the like; while in there, on the earthen floor of the kitchen, stood her huge, unwieldly loom. The cabin was situated in the midst of a small patch of cultivated ground, hemmed in on every side by dense and lofty woods, which spread their waving shadows for miles and miles away to the north and south, to the east and west, with only here and there, at wide intervals, a similar clearing, or a natural glade to speck the boundless green.

Now Sprigg, you must know, happened to be an only child—a most uncommon circumstance in backwoods life—your backwoodsman, like your poor woodcutter, who makes such a figure in old-time story-books, rarely stopped short of a baker's dozen, as a replenisher of the earth. Such being the case, "Pap" and "Mam" must need, of course, do their very utmost to make their one chub as troublesome as six, in order to realize, so it would seem, how much kind Providence had done for them; i. e., by overdoing the thing to make him happy; underdoing the thing to make him good enough to be what they most desired. To exemplify: If there chanced to be a little bread in the cupboard and a little milk in the springhouse (these were luxuries then in the Hunter's Paradise), all of it, though there might be quite enough for two, was sure to find its way to Sprigg's tin cup and pewter spoon; and Sprigg's pewter plate always received the tit-bits of venison and bear's meat. The best feather bed in the house was Sprigg's; so was the warmest place by the fire, which he would share with nobody, but Pow-wow, the dog—the only creature, four-footed or two-footed, with whom he could be in contact for a whole day without coming to hard rubs. If a deer-skin proved, upon dressing, an uncommonly nice piece of buckskin, fine, fair and soft, straight, it was cut up and made into moccasins, breeches and hunting shirt for Sprigg; and should a fat raccoon take a fancy to quarter himself for the night in "Pap's" trap, its fresh, sleek skin would be seen in less than a fortnight thence on Sprigg's head, in the form of a cap, with the ringed tail left on behind, as ornamental there as a cue, if not more so. In short, there was nothing rare, or choice of its kind and within the bestowal of the Hunter's Paradise, which did not, sooner or later, find its way to the hands or feet, to the head or back, or to the selfish little belly of master Sprigg. But these were trifling indulgences compared with others, and would, in all likelihood, have left upon his disposition no other lasting evil effect than to render him overwatchful of his own ease and comfort. What was far worse, he was allowed to say, with his saucy young tongue, whatever he should choose to say; and to do, with his meddling young hands, whatever he should choose to do; and to go, with his wayward young feet, whithersoever his foolish young nose should choose to lead him; so that, by the time he had walked into his twelfth year, a worse spoilt boy, a vainer boy, a more self-conceited boy, a more self-willed boy than master Sprigg was not to be found in the land—ransack the Paradise from Big Bone Lick to the Mammoth Cave.

And yet, to put the question to such parents, as Jervis and Elster—though with little expectation of receiving an audible answer—what other result could reasonably have been looked for in a boy, brought up, like Sprigg, to know no will but his own? This was the very thing to render it next to impossible for him to know what his own will really was and how he should use it, not knowing that of his elders and wisers. This, in turn, was the very thing to keep him but ill at ease with himself, and iller at ease, if not at downright loggerheads, with everybody else.

Now, had Jervis and Elster been as wise as we are—you and I—they would, at the very outset of their son's existence, have laid their own will down, as the rule, whereby he should order his steps until the beard on his lip announced him qualified to follow his own nose, without too great danger of forgetting to allow that organ the help of his eyes and ears. But as it was, they would have done a wiser and more benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife, without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done would have been slight, compared to that of letting him have his will to play with.

So, it were hardly to be laid to poor Sprigg's charge that he was mad enough to figure as a warning example to juvenile evildoers; and it were but Christian in us to draw our sketch of him with a soft nib to our pen, softening down the lines with words from the law of love, which is, or ought to be, written on all our hearts. Had he been as wisely trained as he was affectionately cared for, there is no telling but that Sprigg, instead of being one of the worst boys in the world, he might have turned out to be one of the best—nearly as good, it may be, as a brave little George, the boy, you know, who cut his father's cherry tree with his little hatchet, and when the matter was inquired into, had the courage to own that he was the offender, even while fully expecting that his tender young legs would be made to smart for his adherence to principle. With so brave a start in life, our hero, when he and the time were ripe for it, might have figured as the hero of Mew Orleans, instead of General Jackson, and, qualified by that achievement, have made the American people just as good a President—kicking the national bank as unmercifully out of existence as ever Old Hickory did.

But leaving the might-have-been out of the question and taking things as we find them, Sprigg, by the time he had climbed to the top of his twelfth year, had more serious faults and more foolish ways than I feel willing to stop and take a list of, preferring to let them come out little by little of their own accord, which will seem less like telling tales away from home. One of his faults, however, the most conspicuous, though, by no means, the most grievous, I must mention here at the outset, it being that trait of his character which imparts to our story its particular color and drift. I allude to his vanity, which displayed itself in a ridiculous fondness for fine clothes, not to mention that he was, in every way, a very handsome boy; and the fools, as usual in such cases, had blabbed this into his ears, until he had grown to be as strutty and vain as a peacock.

Now, you smile to think that a boy, who lived in a log cabin and ate his bread and milk with a pewter spoon, and dressed in buckskin breeches and a coonskin cap, should fancy that he had anything to be vain of. But take the second thought; or, if you do not feel inclined to make the effort, I will, by a simple illustration of the point, save you the trouble. Is not turkey-cock just as proud of his homely feathers as peacock of his magnificent plumes? And after the battle fought, which leaves him but the tattered rag of a tail to display to the sun, will not turkey-cock spread that tattered rag of a tail as self-complacently, and strut as grandly and gobble as obstreperously as ever? Aye, that will he! And why? Because his tail—tag-rag or not—is all his own and nobody else's; though almost anybody else may have one which the sun would rather shine on. As with turkey-cock, so with an overwhelming majority of mankind.

CHAPTER II.

Our Hero Falls in Love.

It had only been three or four years since Jervis Whitney and his wife, Elster, had left their old home beyond the Alleghenies to find a new home here in the perilous wilds of green Kentucky, where they had built the cabin they lived in, and cleared the ground they tilled. Among their household goods, they had brought along with them quite a curious medley of such little notions as fancy ribbons and kerchiefs, books, big wood engravings, odd pieces of ware—china, silver and glass—odd pieces of family jewels, strings of bright-colored beads, and the like. Among the rest, were several locks of hair, some of which were gray, the others black or brown, golden-yellow, or flaxen, or white, as the case might be; locks of hair in those simple times being viewed pretty much in the same light that photographs now-a-days are, and, perhaps, even more highly prized and tenderly preserved.

As you have already anticipated, these little notions were gifts for dear remembrance sake from the loved ones they had left so far behind them and whom they were to meet no more for long, long years—perhaps, forever. Precious relics, which the lonely young pair took out, from time to time, to look at them; when, with a smile and a tear, they would tell of the sweet recollections, which this lock of hair, or that piece of chinaware, this book or that old picture was conjuring up from out the lights and shadows of such days as no land but brave old Virginia—happy old Virginia—ever knew.

Now, in this same pack, along with these odds and ends of dear remembrance, there chanced to be an old show bill, which Jervis and Elster had brought along with the rest just to keep them in mind of the happy, happy day, when they two had united their hearts and fortunes for life. On that self-same day they had gone to the show, which was blazed by this self-same show bill; and the occasion made their bridal tour as complete a thing of its kind as nothing short of a centennial could make in these latter days do for the like excursions. On the show bill, in a variety of fancy colors, such as we sometimes see in pictures of Daniel in the den of lions, and the like, were the representations of the animals which were to be seen at the show; and more, you may be sure, than were seen there on that day, or ever had been seen in the land, or ever shall be seen in the world, unless, indeed, what African travelers tell us, backed by Barnum and the man in the moon, should some day turn out to be true. To lend their rustic home a more genteel and civilized appearance, as well as to keep them in mind of the ever-to-be-remembered day just mentioned, Elster had tacked the show bill to the rough log wall of their best room, and against this, for a background, had hung their only looking-glass, with a comb case on one side and Jervis' jolly-faced silver watch on the other; while crowning the glass was a bunch of magnificent eagle feathers—a trophy of her husband's skill as a marksman.

Now, these pictures, flashy, extravagant and out of all nature, though they might seem to our age of chromo, crayon, perfection, had for this many a day been the delight of Sprigg's young eyes. But the one that charmed his fancy more than all the others was that of an Indian boy, apparently about his own age, riding a Shetland pony at a dashing gallop, with the right foot tip-toe on his charger's back, the left amusing itself in the air, the left hand holding the bridle-reins, the right hand flourishing aloft a savage little tomahawk. In the browband of the pony's bridle was stuck the staff of a small red flag, while the gallant young horseman himself was rigged out in leggins and hunting shirt of the fairest of buckskin, trimmed with the blackest of bearskin, a hat of gay feathers upon his head, and upon his feet a magnificent pair of red moccasins.

There was scarcely a day in the week, not even excepting Sunday, that Sprigg did not go and, planting himself before the old show bill, take a long look at the Indian boy and his Shetland pony. And more than a few times, after thus feasting his eyes, had he gone to his mother, where she would be plying her loom in the kitchen, when something like the following confab would take place between them:

"Mam, I do wish that I had a pair of red moccasins, such as the Indian boy in yonder has on!"

"And a red cap, too, such as Jack Monkey in yonder has on!" would his mother rejoin, as she paused in her work. Then resting her arm on the breast beam of the loom and regarding her rising hope with a half-fond, half-ridiculous smile, she would add:

"Still harping on the same old tune! Still hankering after the red tomfooleries! Well, suppose if a civilized white boy should happen to have a pair of red moccasins, what could he do with them?"

"I could wear them to quiltings and to log-rollings and to house-raisings and to shooting matches and to weddings—yes, and to church, too."

"Why, Sprigg, a church is the last place in the world where so outlandish a thing as a pair of red moccasins ought to be seen. How the old people would frown and shake their heads at you! How the young people would titter and point at you; and some would say: 'Just look yonder at Sprigg, strutting about in a pair of red moccasins, as if he were thinking himself so much finer than our bare-footed boys—the young monkey!' And, Sprigg, would you like to be called a monkey? I rather think not. You'd rather take a whipping any day than to be laughed at and ridiculed."

"No, but they wouldn't laugh; nobody would think of laughing. The boys would envy me and the girls would admire me, and everybody would say: 'Just look yonder at Sprigg! But isn't he fine? Oh, how beautiful! So beautiful in his red moccasins.'"

And the vain boy would fall to dancing and skipping about the earthen floor of the kitchen, as if the very thought of the moccasins had made him tipsy.

"Dandy Jim, of Caroline, might say all that of dandy monkey at a show," would Elster answer, "and dandy Jim might say as much of dandy Sprigg at church, but nobody else would—count on that! So, just leave the red tomfooleries to Indians and monkeys, my boy; and just make up your mind to be satisfied, and more than satisfied, too, with the nice boots, which pap has promised to bring you when he goes to our old home next spring."

But, let his mother picture him in whatever color she might, the vain boy would go on hankering after the red moccasins all the same; till, by and by, they took such hold on his fancy that his thoughts by day and his dreams by night assumed the same complexion, and became, so to speak, as red as the reddest of leather. Indeed, there were moments when it did seem to Sprigg as if he would be willing to part with one of his legs for a pair of red moccasins.

Now, you are thinking such a whim, out of all nature and reason, absurd, and I fully agree with you; yet, have I known a few grown-up children in my day, of high reputation for judgment, who in some of the fancies they have cherished, and in some of the bargains they have made, have exhibited not a whit more judgment than poor Sprigg. Distinguished personages, who, from the solid and dignified outward appearance they showed to the eyes of the world, would give you the impression that they had never entertained a foolish fancy, or mistaken the shadow for the substance in all their lives, I have known women who have given their hands—sacrificed the best of their hearts—to put their heads in other women's bonnets; and I have known men who have sold their very souls to set their feet in other men's shoes.

So, time went lagging by; lagging, perhaps, because his feet were not shod with a pair of red moccasins; or, it may be, because he was not mounted on a Shetland pony. At last, one night in April, as they were all sitting around a roaring log fire, Sprigg's dreams took a definite shape, as well as color. Jervis had sat for some time smoking his pipe in thoughtful silence, when he turned to his wife and thus addressed her:

"So, Elster, I am to set out on my long tramp for the Old Dominion; and with what a light heart I could do it, too, could I but take you and our boy along with me. But, as it is, I am beginning to feel already quite out of sorts at the very thought of leaving you behind me for so long, and I would give up the trip altogether were it not for the business, which no one else can attend to but myself."

Sprigg was sitting directly in front of the fire, gazing with a fixed and dreamy look into the glowing embers before him; and, observing this, his father said to him:

"Come, Sprigg, let us have some of the pictures you are drawing there in the fire-coals! You can beat any boy of your size at that sort of headwork that ever I saw. What do you see in the coals?"

"I see," answered the boy, in a musing way, "I see an Indian boy standing tip-toe on the back of a Shetland pony, riding at full gallop, his head all waving with feathers, his feet so fine with red moccasins, and he is showing off before a great crowd of people, who seem to be waving their hats, as if they were shouting: 'Hurrah! Hurrah! Splendid! Splendid!' Oh, how I wish that I were an Indian boy, and had a Shetland pony; then might I travel from town to town and show off before the people, and be somebody, and so happy!"

Then, with a start, as if a bright thought had flashed out to him from the fire-coal, he exclaimed:

"Oh, pap! won't you get me a pair of red moccasins while you are gone, please?" And coming over and laying his hand on his father's shoulder, he repeated his request—all in the softest, winningest way you can well imagine. For, whenever he had an object near at heart, and knew he could gain it by a little palaver, Sprigg could appear as soft and winning as any young tom-cat you ever saw.

"But, Sprigg, why not the boots, which I have been promising you for a year or more? Black boots, with fair tops and brass heel-taps, that will make a gentleman of you as soon as you put them on."

"But I would not care for the boots half so much; and, if you will just only bring me the moccasins I won't say one word about anything else you have been promising me. I won't even ask you to get me the fur hat, nor the red waistcoat, nor the little hunting knife, nor the little tomahawk—nothing but the red moccasins."

The artful young rogue made this spreading display of self-denial merely to jog his father's memory, knowing perfectly well that he was running no risk of being taken at his word, and that by his offer of release he should be all the more certain of receiving what had been promised him.

"Then, red moccasins shall you have, my boy!" cried the fond father, giving his son a chum-like slap on the back. "Let me but find them in the Old Dominion, and the red moccasins shall you have—yes, and the boots to boot."

Of course, it never once entered Jervis Whitney's mind that so fantastic a thing as a pair of red moccasins was to be found in the Old Dominion, or anywhere else outside of a monkey show, though he might search the world, with a will-o'-the-wisp, from Big Bone Lick to the Land of Nod. So, in saying, "let me but find them, and you shall have them," he thought he was hazarding his word no more than were he to say: "Let the man in the moon but give me the moon, and the moon, my boy, is yours."

"Yes, pap, get him the red moccasins—do, by all means!" here put in Elster, who had a vein of mocking pleasantry, in which she was wont to indulge, especially whenever, as now, her fingers were busy with yarn and knitting needles. "With a little practice he could play Indian every whit as well as Jack Monkey, if not better; and we ought to do all we can to bring out his talent, so that he may make a monkey of himself, and, as he says, 'be somebody, and so happy.' So you furnish the moccasins and the tomahawk and I will get up the rest of the rigging. I will trim his new buckskin breeches and hunting shirt with bearskin, and take those plumes from over the looking-glass up there, and make him as fine a feathered hat as ever grandmother Pocahontas fixed up for brothers. Nor shall the war paint be forgotten. I will streak and stripe and spot his face till he looks as savage and fierce as Big Foot, the Wyandot giant—scary enough to scare a scare-crow. Then, having so bedaubed and bedizened him that his own looking-glass couldn't tell him whose son he was, we will take him out, and, mounting him upon old Blue Blaze, witness him make his maiden effort. To be sure, old Blue Blaze is not exactly what you might call a Shetland pony, but by that time she will have a colt a month or two old, so that while our monkey is up there, playing Big Injun on the old mare's back, coltie can trot along behind and play Little Shetland. Meanwhile, we must be making all the noise we can, clapping our hands and shouting: 'Hurrah! hurrah! splendid! splendid!' Should our demonstrations fall short of the desired effect, and we should happen to hear some of our red neighbors shouting and yelling over there in the woods, we will call them in to help us out. They will make noise enough to slack his thirst for applause, I warrant you. They will be so delighted with his performance that nothing will satisfy them short of taking him home with them—Blue Blaze, coltie and all—to old Chillicothe, where he shall be kept all his days to play Big Paleface for the reds, just as Jack Monkey is kept in the Old Dominion to play Dandy Nigger for the whites.

"Yes, pap, get him the red moccasins. Let him make a monkey of himself, and 'be somebody and so happy.'"

Now, you must know that our hero, though tough to reproof, was keenly sensitive to ridicule—a jimson weed to that, a snap dragon to this. Having discovered his weakness, his mother was much in the habit of playing upon it, as the only means of persuasion or dissuasion within her command which was likely to make any impression upon his knotty young rind. So, while she was spinning out her rigmarole, Sprigg was making a great show of amusing himself with Pow-wow, slapping him over the muzzle with his coonskin cap, or setting that ornament in divers ways on the old dog's head; now with the tail over the right ear, then over the left, or over the nose; the young sauce-box the while keeping up, in a confidential undertone to his four-footed chum, a running commentary on his mother's burlesque of himself, for every word of which he should have received a sounding spank.

"Some folks think they are monstrous smart, don't they, Pow-wow?"

"You could bark tip a tree and do better than that, couldn't you, Pow-wow?"

"Funny enough to make a dog laugh, isn't it, Pow-wow?"

"Some folks ought to be told what fools they are, oughtn't they, Pow-wow?"

won't we, Pow-wow?"

CHAPTER III.

Meets with the Object of His Love.

So, next Monday, Jervis Whitney set out on his long tramp, with Pow-wow for company, and with Black Bess, his rifle, to keep them supplied with game, their chief dependence for subsistence while traveling the five hundred miles of wilderness, which lay between them and their old home beyond the Alleghenies. While they were gone, Sprigg kept count of the months and weeks and days, and, as they went silently gliding by, he went silently dreaming on about the red moccasins. Silently, for never another word said he to his mother concerning the matter he had so near at heart. He knew she would laugh at him, and call him a monkey—our hero, bear in mind, being as touchy to ridicule as a raw mouth to ginger. You might scold him and rate him, sneap him and snub him, to a degree you would suppose sufficient to break the heart of any boy who knew his catechism, yet not a fig nor a flint would he care for it all. Perhaps, he would kick up his heels in the very face of your reproof; or, it may be, merely wrinkle up his saucy young knob of a nose, thereby saying as plainly as words could say it:

The month of May was drawing near its close. Night was spreading its dusky shadows over the lonely forest home. The turkey-cock had gone to its rest; so had the red-bird, so had the jay-bird; so had Sprigg. Elster had heard her boy repeat his prayers and was now singing him to sleep with a hymn; a pious custom which, in all sincerity, she had faithfully observed from his infancy up; doing her best, from night to night, to make him a Christian, while suffering him, from day to day, to become more and more of a heathen. Such parental inconsistencies were rare in the days of Mary Washington, but are so common nowadays that no one excepting himself or herself can find an exception to the rule except at home. The last line of the hymn had just been sung, and Sprigg was making his last big sleepy wink at the cradle before fairly off for nodland, when they heard, first, a glad yelp out there in the yard, which they thought they knew; then a brisk, firm step on the loose board floor of the porch, which they were certain they knew. Up from her chair sprang Elster; up from his bed bounced Sprigg, and by the time the door, with a ringing click of its wooden latch, swung open, both were there, and both hugged tight in the long, strong arms of husband and father.

"Heaven be thanked!" exclaimed Elster, kissing her husband for the——, but I must not say what number of times.

"The moccasins! the moccasins!—where are my red moccasins?" cried Sprigg, who had not kissed nor hugged his father once.

"You young feather-pate! you jay-bird!" exclaimed Jervis. "Can't you give your poor pap some little sign of welcome first?"

"Oh! then, you have got them! You have got them!" And now, assured that such was the case, Sprigg could find it in his heart to hug and kiss his father, which he did as sleekly and lovingly as any he-kitten. But Sprigg paid for this bit of selfishness, and that dearly, too. Having laid Black Bess in the rifle-hooks over the fireplace, and hung his bearskin cap on the hook to the left and his ammunition pouch and powder horn on the hook to the right, Jervis hugged and kissed his wife again. Then, from the capacious game bag which, slung by a strap from the shoulder, he wore at his side, he began drawing out slowly and with great show of carefulness a small package, which Sprigg instinctively knew to be the object of his heart's desire. The next moment, held high aloft in pap's right hand, there they were at last, in plain view before his eyes, the long dreamed of red moccasins. How beautiful looked they. Trimmed with the finest of fur and glittering all over with the brightest of beads, to say nothing of the color—red, as the reddest of leather could be, not dyed in blood. You would have laughed, or, perhaps, felt more like crying, to have seen the poor, vain boy, as he stood there, with his heart in his eyes, gazing gloatingly up at the moccasins as if the very shine of them had charmed him out of his senses. Thus he stood for several moments till, giving a quick turn of the head, he glanced sharply up at the Indian boy on the show bill, as if half expecting to find the young horseman stripped of his moccasins and now performing his equestrian antics in bare feet.

"Jervis," said Elster, grieved and provoked, "I am so surprised that you should indulge our boy in so ridiculous a fancy, as were he, after all, the monkey he would make himself. I had no idea that you would ever give the whim a second thought. Why did you not get him the boots you have been promising him? Throw the moccasins into the fire and let us be rid of the nuisance at once! If you won't, I will!"

"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!"

CHAPTER IV.

He Has Them—What Shall He Do With Them?

But the first broad stare of the day's bright eyes drove all these dark dreams and wild shapes of the night from his mind; and nimble and fresh as a jay-bird—nimbler and fresher, indeed, than was his wont—Sprigg sprang from his bed and donned the red moccasins. Yes, shod his feet the first thing; and, leaving his breeches to cover the naked legs of the stool, he went out on the front porch, there to take his morning airing and see what color red moccasins were by daylight. Here, at the end of an hour, he was found by his mother, strutting to and fro like a young peacock in the pride of his first tail feathers. The morning breezes briskly fluttering his only garment and doing all they could for his health. Provoked to find him at so late an hour, in such a guise, which was full six inches too short for any guise at all, Elster gave the "rising hope and promise" a spank, which would have done you good to see and hear, and bade him go and finish his toilet and perform his morning ablutions—all in a hurry, too, or she would give his bread and milk to Pow-wow. Whereat the hopeful youngster kicked up his heels, and, as it pleased him for once to be obedient, ran and did as he was bidden, and in a trice was ready for his bread and milk, which, in the glee of the moment, he shared with Pow-wow.

The day succeeding pap's return chanced to be Sunday, so Sprigg, as a matter of course, was allowed to wear the red moccasins from morning till night, just by way of making him sensible. How much better and more dearly to be remembered that day was than Monday, or any other day of the week. But a too full Sunday makes an empty Monday, as Mother Goose herself has covertly hinted in the well known lines: