Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/246

 208 you?" asked the second lad. "This," replied the woman, pointing to five boxes which they had with them. "These contain great 'medicine.' In these are wasps and flies and mosquitos, and wind and smoke. We have only to open these boxes to drive off anybody," and as they spoke one of the two opened the wasp box a little, into which Clatkeq, or Funny-boy, the second youth, was peering, and a wasp came out and stung him on the face. "You will let us have a salmon for supper, won't you?" now asked Benign-face. But the witches answered him angrily, and bade them be off. Benign-face took no notice of this, but told his elder brother to take a spear and catch a salmon below the weir or dam. While the brother was doing this, Benign-face took a piece of wood and made a dish from it for the salmon, which they placed upon it when cooked. They ate every morsel of the fish. Then Benign-face took the dish and, transferring some of his own mystic power into it, threw it into the middle of the stream above the barrier which the witches had erected. Immediately the waters began to boil and rage, and the dish was carried down against the barrier, which it struck with such force that it broke a large hole in the middle of it, and the salmon at once began to pass through. The witches now tried to mend the gap and keep the salmon back; but while they were thus employed Funny-boy opened the boxes and let out all their contents. Seeing this, the two women left the dam and tried to imprison their "medicine" again. But it was too late; for the smoke and the wind and the wasps and the flies and the mosquitos were scattered all over the country, and the escaped wind had agitated the river so much that it swept away the remainder of the witches' barrier, and thus they lost both "medicine" and dam. But before they had time to do more than realise that they had been outwitted. Benign-face transformed them into two rocks. The scene of these events was at a spot a few miles above Spence's Bridge; but the two rocks have since been so badly cut away by the action of the water that little if any of them is now to be seen there.

Going on from here, they came some time after to a solitary keekwilee-house, and finding no one to ask them in, they entered and made themselves at home. The remains of a small fire burned in the fire-hole, round which, as the weather was cold, they sat and tried to warm themselves. "I wish there were some wood in the place," said Funny-boy presently, as he looked round for some