Atondido Stories
animals and birds, he prayed to his guardian spirit to tell him
the cause of the drumming. Soon an old man came along. He
was old and bent and wrinkled, but his eyes were kind. The
youth gave him some tobacco and they sat down together on the
edge of the lake and watched the swimmers in the dim light, and
smoked their pipes.
"What are you doing here?" asked the old man. "I am trying
to learn the cause of the strange drumming," said the youth.
"You do well indeed to seek it," said the old man, "and to seek to
know the cause of all things. Only in that way will you be great
and wise. But remember there are some things the cause of
which you can never find." "Where have you come from?" said
the boy. "Oh," said the man, "I lived once upon a time like you in
the Country of Fancy where great Dreams dwell, and indeed I
live there still, but your dreams are all of the future while mine
are of the past. But some day you too will change and your
thoughts will be like mine." "Tell me the cause of the drum-
ming," said the boy. And the old man said, "Take this wand that I
will give you and wave it before you go to sleep, and maybe you
will see strange things." Then he gave the boy a wand and disap-
peared into the forest and the boy never saw him again. The boy
waved the wand and fell asleep on the sand as the old man had
told him. When he awoke he found himself in a large room in
the midst of many people. Some of them were dancing graceful-
ly, and some sat around and talked. They wore wonderful robes
of skins and feathers, of many different colours. The boy wished
he could get such feathers for his own clothes and his bonnet.
But as he looked at the people he was suddenly aware that they
were none other than the animals and birds he had seen for two
nights swimming in the lake in the moonlight. They were now
changed into human form, through some strange and
79