Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/262

 "I'd better," he said. "Thank you." Then to the medium, "Where?"

"He says, 'To my house in the lonely place where was woman, my wife.' He says, 'There boy was born; you stayed there.

"What happened to my mother?"

"She stayed there too."

"Then what happened?"

No answer.

"Did she die?" Barney asked.

"No," said the voice. "Pauguk did not strike her. She was very sick; but she did not die; she went away. She had to go away, he wants to say."

"When?"

"At the moon of the wild rice gathering."

"When she went away, he means?"

"Yes."

"Then when did she come?"

"In the moon of the breaking snowshoes."

"What year?"

The medium made no direct answer; but after a pause the voice continued: "He says that all summer she fed the baby at her breast till she went sick again. He wants to tell you that she said, when she went away, she surely would return. He says, 'There I lived until water froze again.' He says, 'When she is gone, I bring milk to the child from a cow. A cow was on the shore; at sunset, when I have taken the fish from the nets, I went ashore in my boat and got milk. But no one came back; so I went away.

"Where did you go?" Barney cried quickly, as the medium's posture changed; gone from her, as surprisingly as they had come, were the slight motions of her hands, the jerkings and mannerisms which had char-