It was an autumn night on the plain. The smoke-lapels of the cone-shaped
tepee flapped gently in the breeze. From the low night sky, with its
myriad fire points, a large bright star peeped in at the smoke-hole of
the wigwam between its fluttering lapels, down upon two Dakotas talking
in the dark. The mellow stream from the star above, a maid of twenty
summers, on a bed of sweetgrass, drank in with her wakeful eyes. On the
opposite side of the tepee, beyond the centre fireplace, the grandmother
spread her rug. Though once she had lain down, the telling of a story
has aroused her to a sitting posture.

Her eyes are tight closed. With a thin palm she strokes her wind-shorn
hair.

"Yes, my grandchild, the legend says the large bright stars are wise old
warriors, and the small dim ones are handsome young braves," she
reiterates, in a high, tremulous voice.

"Then this one peeping in at the smoke-hole yonder is my dear old
grandfather," muses the young woman, in long-drawn-out words.

Her soft rich voice floats through the darkness within the tepee, over
the cold ashes heaped on the centre fire, and passes into the ear of the
toothless old woman, who sits dumb in silent reverie. Thence it flies on
swifter wing over many winter snows, till at last it cleaves the warm
light atmosphere of her grandfather's youth. From there her grandmother
made answer:

"Listen! I am young again. It is the day of your grandfather's death.
The elder one, I mean, for there were two of them. They were like twins,
though they were not brothers. They were friends, inseparable! All