“When Wo came back to his tribe, all who saw his face knew that he had found the answer, and they gathered again about the council fire to hear.  As Wo stood up and looked into the eager faces in the circle of the fire, he remembered that the Great Spirit had given him no message, and for a moment he was dumb.  Then the words of the Great Spirit came to him again:  ’When thy people and Mine shall need to know My will, My spirit shall brood over thine and the words that thou shalt speak shall be My words.’  Looking into the eager faces of longing and questioning, his spirit moved within him and he spoke: 

“’I went, I sought, I found the Great Spirit, who dwells in the earth as your spirits dwell in your bodies.  It is from Him the spirit comes.  We are His children.  He cares for us more than a mother for the child at her breast, or the father for the son that is his pride.  His love is like the air we breathe:  it is about us; it is within us.

“’The sun is the sign of His brightness, the sky of His greatness, and mother-love and father-love, and the love of man and woman are the signs of His love.  We are but children; we cannot enter into the council of the Great Chief until we have been proved, but this is His will, that we love one another as He loves us; that we bury forever the hatchet of hate; that no man shall take what is not his own and the strong shall help the weak.’

“The chiefs did not wholly understand the words of Wo, but they took a hatchet and buried it by the fire, saying:  ’Thus bury we hate between man and his brother,’ and they took an acorn and put it in the earth, saying:  ‘Thus plant we the love of the strong for the weak.’  And it became the custom of the tribe that the great council in the spring should bury the hatchet and plant the acorn.

“Every morning the tribe gathered to greet the rising sun, and, with right hands raised and left hands upon their hearts, prayed:  ’Great Spirit, hear us; guide us today; make our wills Thy will, our ways Thy way.’

“And the tribe grew stronger and greater and wiser than all the other tribes—­but that is another story.”  —­Association Seminar, December, 1910.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Camp-Fire Musings-William C. Gray.  Fleming H. Revell Company, $1.00 net.  A book full of the spirit of the woods and of camp life.

Camp-fire stories.

In Camp with Boys—­G.  W. Hinckley.  Central Maine Pub.  Co., $1.00.

The Shadowless Man—­Adelbert Von Chamisso.  Frederick Warne & Co., $1.00 net.

Mystery and Detective Stories, six volumes.  Review of Reviews Co.

[Illustration:  Pathfinders (hikers)]

CHAPTER XI—­TRAMPS, HIKES, AND OVER-NIGHT TRIPS