“Awake, chief, and come out from your den. Wise-as-a-she-wolf is here to talk to you,” cried the magician, in a formidable voice.

The head and shoulders of the giant immediately appeared, and from under a fringe of tangled hair a pair of alert eyes, gray as ice, glared about on every side and up in the air. The giant’s face was covered with untidy, yellow whiskers. His forehead sloped back sharply from his eyebrows, and his nose was flat. He crouched on all-fours, and in one massive hand, which rested on the ground, he grasped the smaller end of a trimmed pine-tree. The magician thought of the littlest warrior, far away and alone in the magic lodge, and decided to act with discretion.

“Is it you, little great-man?” said the giant, in a voice that was not unlike the growling of a beast. “I don’t see you,” he continued. “Show yourself and come nearer. Old Crack Bone is ready to talk to you.”

“I can talk to you very well from where I am,” replied Wise-as-a-she-wolf. “All I want to know is, have you seen anything of two little red feathers?”

“I was afraid you had come to slay us all, mighty powerful one,” said the giant, with a thunderous chuckle. “We might wade across to that little island of yours some day, and eat all your caribou and kill all your people,” he added.

“And that will be time enough for me to slay you. Now I want you to give me the two red feathers which you took from the feet of the dead man,” replied the magician.

“Was he one of your warriors?” asked the giant. “When I saw him flying along, like a bird, I thought it was the great Wise-as-a-she-wolf himself. So I just threw a little bone into the air, to attract his attention, and down he came, so hard that his life was knocked right out of him.” Then he shook with horrible laughter at the remembrance.

“Wise-as-a-she-wolf would never fly near you, without first making himself invisible. He knows you too well to trust you,” replied the magician, sternly.

“The poor fellow whom you killed was not one of my people,” he continued, “but the feathers are mine, for all that, and I must ask you to give them to me immediately.”

“How can I give them to you, when I can’t see you?” inquired the giant, with a grin.

“If you will kindly lay them on the top of your lodge,” replied the other.

“Little great-one,” said Crack Bone, “I am not afraid of you, or any magician, or anything alive under the sun. You can hide from my eye; but that does me no harm. As for the feathers, my brave warrior, why, I intend to keep them for my own use. They are of such virtue that, when I put them in my moccasins I can jump twice as high as my head. With a little more practice, I shall be able to fly as well as that unfortunate young man was flying before I tossed the shank-bone of a moose at him.”

The magician was very angry at that, and felt a strong desire to increase his size and close in deadly combat with the giant. But he remembered the battle with Bright Robe, and the injuries then received, and thought of what might happen to the baby in the distant lodge if he should be disabled by the giant. So he changed his position, took a small stone from the ground, breathed upon it, and threw it into the roof of the giant’s lodge. Next moment the whole structure was a mass of flames, and the giant, with a howl of rage, had scrambled from the dangerous place and hurled his club at where he thought the magician was standing. The huge weapon struck a clump of young spruce trees and broke them as if they were twigs; but the magician stood safe.

“Will you play any more of your magic on Crack Bone?” roared the giant, as he jumped again and again upon the fallen timber and threshed about with his club. Wise-as-a-she-wolf made no sound. Before Crack Bone had desisted from his violent dance, half a dozen of his people arrived on the scene, shouting questions and staring with amazement at the great pile of blazing timber that had so lately been the chief’s lodge. At last Crack Bone leaned on his club, and, between gasps for breath (for the smoke from his burning den blew about him), answered some of their questions.

“It was that little magician, Wise-as-a-she-wolf, from across the salt water,” he said. “He came for the red feathers. He told me to give him back those fine red feathers. But he won’t need them now.”

Crack Bone laughed victoriously, and drew the tiny feathers from some safe hiding-place about his person. He held them up, between his great fingers, so that all might see. Then, bending down, he slipped one into each of his moccasins. The magician sprang high into the air, at sign of these preparations, and hung at a safe distance above the savage group, watchful but invisible.

“Stand aside, friends,” roared Crack Bone. “Now I have the magic feathers under my feet and I intend to jump about, so don’t stand too close.”

The other giants fell back the distance of a few of their own great strides. Then Crack Bone gathered himself together and leaped upward with all the strength of his massive legs. Up he shot, high above the surrounding tree-tops, struggled in the air for a few seconds and sank back to earth. The magic of the feathers was not strong enough to keep his mountain-like body afloat. His friends were greatly impressed by this display of agility, and shouted until the earth rang. But the magician, high and unseen, only smiled.

“I fear nothing,” cried the giant, to his people. “Wise-as-a-she-wolf angered me, and now where is he? He set the red fire to eat my house to dust, but he was not strong enough to save his own life. Oh, I am strong and mighty, and have flying magic under my feet.” At that he began to jump here and there, so recklessly that the other giants moved sullenly away.

“I think the feathers are safe in his keeping,” said the magician. “He cannot harm my people with them, for they cannot lift so great a weight across the Narrow Sea. Some other time, when the littlest warrior is older and stronger, I shall return and win the feathers back. I shall always know where to find them.”

With that, he set his face again in the direction of his own country and his own lodge, and flashed through the air with all the speed of the moccasins of the wind; and far behind and below, Crack Bone, the chief of the giants, continued to caper and shout before his blazing house.

Within a hundred yards of the giant, in the top of a fir-tree, perched a little brown owl. He sat very still; but his yellow eyes were full of light and eagerness and cunning. He watched the stupid giant leaping and skipping on the magic feathers, and was glad that he had visited this desolate country.