The Crane that Crossed the River

Accordingly one day, when they were out in the woods, learning to follow the chase, they told him all that they had seen.

The face of the father grew dark. He was still for a while, and when at length he looked up—

"It is done!" he said. "Do you, my children, tarry here until the hour of the falling of the sun, then come to the lodge and you will find me."

The father left them at a slow pace, and they remained sporting away their time till the hour for their return had come.

When they reached the lodge the mother was not there. They dared not to ask their father whither she had gone, and from that day forth her name was never spoken again in the lodge.

In course of time the two boys had grown to be men, and although the mother was never more seen in the lodge, in charge of her household tasks, nor on the path in the forest, nor by the river side, she still lingered, ever and ever, near the lodge.

Changed, but the same, with ghastly looks and arms that were withered, she appeared to her sons as they returned from the hunt, in the twilight, in the close of the day.

At night she darkly unlatched the lodge-door and glided in, and bent over them as they sought to sleep. Oftenest it was her bare brow, white, and bony, and bodyless, that they saw floating in the air, and making a mock of them in the wild paths of the forest, or in the midnight darkness of the lodge.

She was a terror to all their lives, and she made every spot where they had seen her, hideous to the living eye; so that after being long buffeted and beset, they at last resolved, together with their father, now stricken in years, to leave the country.

They began a journey toward the South. After traveling many days along the shore of a great lake, they passed around a craggy bluff, and came upon a scene where there was a rough fall of waters, and a river issuing forth from the lake.

They had no sooner come in sight of this fall of water, than they heard a rolling sound behind them, and looking back, they beheld the skull of a woman rolling along the beach.