Wise-as-a-she-wolf had not been gone from the clearing of Whispering Grass more than ten minutes before the little brown owl that had once been Bright Robe made his appearance from the gloom of the woods and perched on one of the poles at the peak of the lodge. The old woman looked up and saw the round, yellow eyes staring down at her with such a hateful glare that she knew them for the orbs of the cruel magician. Her heart weakened within her. She could not remove her eyes from the threatening, baleful regard. But as the owl did not come nearer, courage returned to her by slow degrees. She remembered that, no matter how murderous the bird’s designs upon her, he was but a bird after all, with no power to change his shape until five long summers were passed. So, suddenly, she turned away, snatched a fagot from the ground and hurled it upward through the smoke-hole in the peak of the wigwam. But the owl was already in the air, floating back to the dense shades of the forest.

The owl did not move again from his retreat in a thicket of pines, until night. He was hungry; and as soon as darkness fell he ventured from his perch to look for food. The thought of raw flesh was not repulsive to him, for he had even eaten it in his human form; but he had grave misgivings as to his present ability to kill. He knew that he must fly very quietly, peering about for mice and birds, and, at the first movement in the moss or foliage, pounce down and strike with his claws. So shrewdly did hunger gnaw him that he quite forgot, for the time being, the indignity of his position.

He moved through the forest ways like a drifting shadow, sometimes close to the ground, sometimes among the pointed tree-tops. For several hours he hunted high and low, far and wide, without detecting so much as a sign of life in woodland or barren. At last he lit on the tip of a little spruce tree and peered sharply about on all sides and listened intently. He heard a slight rustle at the foot of the tree but could see nothing. Again the rustling sound came to his alert ears and he saw something moving on the ground, beyond the lowest branch of the tree. It must be a mouse he thought, and the idea fairly made his little beak water with anticipation of the feast.

He marked the spot, and pounced. His claws hooked into a hairy mass. Something snarled and sprang. With a terrified squawk he bounced to one side, just out of reach of a pair of snapping jaws, and flew swiftly into the top of a pine. He had mistaken the tail of a fox for a mouse.

The owl learned several more useful lessons that night; but he made no kill. He was knocked about by a white hare, on which he had pitched with a magician’s scorn of the powers of a hare; but he was only a very small owl after all, and the astonished bunny had dealt him a shrewd blow with one of his big hind legs. The only mouse that he had discovered had escaped him with ease; and, most bitter of all his experiences, he had been hunted himself by a great white bird whose wings were as silent as his own. Just before dawn, he returned to the lodge of Whispering Grass and found a few scraps of frozen fish near the store-house of bark and logs.

He ate these ravenously, tearing them with beak and claws. When his hunger was satisfied, he examined the store-house carefully. It was a very small building, raised on four stumps to a height of several feet from the ground. The walls were made of logs, fitted tightly and strongly together, but it seemed to him that the roof was composed of nothing more substantial than a few sheets of birch bark. He scratched at the bark with his claws and jabbed at it with his beak. He got quite beside himself with rage; but his desperate attempts to tear the roof of the old woman’s store-house, so that he could carry away her meat and fish, proved futile.

At last, weary from his exertions, he flew to a near-by tree to think the matter over. He did not care greatly about the food, for its own sake, for a very little of it would keep him in plenty; but he wanted to steal and destroy it so that Whispering Grass would starve. A bright idea occurred to him. He would go to a lynx, or a bear, and tell him that much good food lay close at hand, with only a roof of bark to cover it. And perhaps he could even persuade some big animal to destroy old Whispering Grass herself. Surely the mention of his true name would be enough to induce the fiercest beast in the forest to do his bidding.

The little owl lurked in a tree-top all day, planning his revenge on the old woman. As soon as dusk fell, he flew to the clearing and beheld Whispering Grass squatted in the doorway of her lodge, eating her evening meal. A dish of meat lay on the ground beside her and the smell of it awoke a man’s appetite in the stomach of the fluffy little bird. He perched on the top of the lodge and stared down at his enemy and her repast. He made no sound, and she did not look up. Suddenly he dropped upon the dish, sank his claws into the largest slice of meat, flew swiftly back to his tree and swallowed it to the last tough shred.

The old woman knew, in a moment, that the thief was Bright Robe, for no other owl would have sufficient courage to take food from so near a human being.

“He might even attack me,” she mumbled, “and claw my eyes out.”

So she carried her supper into the lodge, fastened the flap across the doorway and put more wood on the fire. Terror of the evil magician was like a cold wind upon her back.

After finishing his meal, the owl set out in search of a lynx or a bear. The little victory over Whispering Grass made him feel quite like his old self; but he did not forget the lessons that he had learned the night before. He flew cautiously, avoiding the open spaces for fear of the big white bird. He investigated every thicket, entering from above as a matter of discretion. Though he was looking for a lynx, he did not want to find one unexpectedly, and he suspected the lower branches of every tree of sheltering a crouching fox.

After several hours of searching, the little brown owl happened upon an old she bear. She was hunting mice and seemed to be in a cranky humour; and when the owl accosted her politely, in the language of the woods-people with which he had become familiar during his long life as a magician, she did not so much as look up at him. The owl was nettled.

“Do you hear me speak?” he asked.

The bear grunted and began to amble away.

“Hold, hold,” cried the owl. “If you are hungry, I can tell you where to get food in plenty.”

At that the bear halted and turned.

“Hungry,” she grumbled. “Would I be grabbing at little mice if I were not hungry, you miserable, fleshless bunch of feathers?”

“If you talk like that,” replied the owl, “you may go fill your paunch with moss and twigs.”

The bear grumbled more than ever. She did not like owls, for they had the reputation of pretending to know a great deal, and, in reality, of knowing very little. Also, she had once tried to make a meal off one of these scrawny birds, in a time of famine. On the other hand, she was far too hungry to turn her back on any chance of obtaining a full meal.

“You must excuse my rudeness,” she grumbled, “but I’m really so worried about the scarcity of fish and soft roots and the activity of the hares, that I scarcely know what I say. I believe you mentioned food. What kind of food?”

“Pemmican and smoked salmon and dried caribou meat,” said the owl.

The old bear sat up and pressed her paws to her stomach.

“If I could only believe it. But you owls are all liars,” she mumbled.

“I only appear to be an owl,” said the little bird. “I am, in reality, the great magician Bright Robe.”

The bear paid no attention to this remark.

“Where is the food?” she asked.

“In the clearing of that old woman called Whispering Grass,” the owl informed her.

“In her store-house?”

“Yes.”

“And is the old woman dead?”

“No,” replied the owl. “She is not dead yet.”

“Perhaps you mean that you intend to kill her,” sneered the bear.

“If you carry away her food, then she’ll die of starvation,” said the wicked little owl.

The bear was quite inarticulate with fury and disgust. She ran to the tree on which the bird was perched and clawed at and shook it.

“You feather-head,” she managed to growl, at last, “do you want me to get my hair all eaten off again by that old woman’s red fire? I know her store-house, you rascal. It is as strong as a rock. I tried to break into it once, when I was younger, and she came out with a stick of fire and hit me a hundred times.”

Before the owl could recover himself from the unexpected outburst of wrath, the old she bear had ambled swiftly into the depths of the forest.