Page:Indian tales of the great ones.djvu/96

88 "I will not come," said the boy. "Go back to the King of Death and say: 'The boy who loves the life he knows, says that he cannot come to the new life which he does not know.

And the messengers went trembling back to the King with this message.

Now the King of Death is very old, and very kind and gentle, and he has the wisdom of Peace and of Forgetfulness. And the journey back to the life which the boy loved was for him a very long journey. "But I must see," he said, "the one person who has disobeyed me." So he sent for his black buffalo, and he rode the long and painful journey back to Life and Youth in the world of the-things-that-pass.

And it was spring-time, and the leaves of the pipal tree were shining after a shower of rain, which had made