8 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ Vou. Ve;

maidens!. One of them coming up to him said: “Our father is terrible
and our mother, too, is terrible; they will kill you.” Then the youngest
said to him: “It is I whom people call Sz-ne-najaz, the skillful con-
cealer.” Therefore she took the child up and hid him under one of her
wings’ feathers.

When her father came home, he remarked: “How is that? It smells
of. qstas?!” To which she made answer, saying: “ We have seen
nobody.” But the father-thunder set upon inspecting each of her wing
feathers successively. As soon as he got to the one concealing the child,
who was no other than qstas*, the young girl slipped him off so
dexterously under the feather just examined that her father did not see
him.

Then the thunder-bird began to send forth his bolts. The whole
mountain was soon trembling under his peals and his bolts were for a
while falling right and left on the rocks of the mountain. It was very
terrible. Little by little, however, the father-thunder calmed himself,
and the child, whose presence was no more suspected, was at liberty to
come out of his place of concealment.

In his agitation the thunder-bird had strewn the top of the mountain
with a large number of his feathers. These the child picked up, made a
bundle of them and set out to return to the house of his father-in-law,
who by that time had got home.

The child therefore descended to the base of the mountain and followed
the shore of the lake until he got back to the lodge of the old man.
His father-in-law was immensely surprised to see him arrive, inasmuch
as. he had for a time thought him dead. “Thus it is that this one‘
torments people!” said the child entering the lodge, and then he cast
the bundle of feathers down in the fire-place, the ashes of which, floating
up in clouds, fell back on the old man. For the child was angry indeed.

Some time afterwards the old man said to his son-in-law : “Let us fly
one against the other®.” To which the child made answer, saying: “It
is you who make the proposition, therefore commence yourself.” The
old man transformed himself into a grey jay°®, and set out to fly

1This whole episode is substantially found in a separate legend of an Eastern Déné tribe.
2The introduction of ystas here is evidently an interpolation.

3 So said my narratrix.

4 That is the old man; expressive of spite.

5 N2’to pe 7 gat’stjtéh, that is ‘‘let us see which one of us can fly the best.”

6 Perisoreus Canadensis, a bird constantly laughed at by the natives, and synonymous among
them with stupidity and vain talk.