They sat down to the feast and the old man took meat and smelled of it. "How, my son," he said. "I do not eat the meat of the red beaver."

"But you can not refuse," said the Stone Boy. "At any rate, you must take some of the soup."

The wicked old man hesitated. He rolled his eyes about and his limbs trembled. But he dared not refuse to partake of a sacred feast. So he drank a little of the soup and tasted meat. Then he excused himself. He mentioned all his relatives, saying that these should take his place at this feast and for their sake he had refrained from further eating. He also muttered prayers to protect himself and lit his sacred pipe, blowing a great deal of smoke through his nostrils.

The man's medicine did not protect him. He became very ill and lay upon the ground groaning. "Alas, alas, my drum and lance!" he muttered.

He continued very ill, and, in the night, the Stone Boy awoke to find himself adrip with sweat and half dead from suffocation. He uncovered his head and saw that the wakan man was become like a huge toad, having swollen until his body filled the lodge and his skin was stretched as the rawhide upon a drum's head.

 Dreams and Thunder: Stories, Poems, and the Sun Dance Opera, p. 52-53