dig hard sometimes find it. And after that was done she put the
pole back again.

Next she lifted down a spade from a high shelf, where it had
grown quite rusty, and dug a very small hole on the opposite side
of the hut--very small, but very deep.

'Give me the bridge,' said she, ' for I am going to bury it here.
If anyone was to get hold of it, and find that they could cross
rivers and seas without any trouble, they would never discover
how to cross them for themselves. I am a witch, and if I had
chosen I could easily have cast my spells over the Bad One, and
have made him deliver them to you the first day you came into my
hut. But then you would never have fasted, and never have
planned how to get what you wanted, and never have known the good
spirits, and would have been fat and idle to the end of your
days. And now go; in that hut, which you can just see far away,
live your father and mother, who are old people now, and need a
son to hunt for them. You have done what you were set to do, and
I need you no more.'

Then Ball-Carrier remembered his parents and went back to them.

[From Bureau of Ethnology. 'Indian Folklore.']




The Bunyip