hen he
paddled up the river, paddling fast and hard, so that when he stood
before the old chief's lodge he was very thin.

The eldest daughter came out when he called, and said: "It is a shame
for such an ugly man to have a chief's daughter for his wife. You are
not a man; you are only the bones of a man, like the poles of the lodge
when the bark is stripped away. Come back when you are fat."

Then he went away to his lodge, and ate and slept and ate and slept till
he was fat, and he made his face beautiful with red clay and went and
called to the chief's daughter to come and marry him. But she called out
to him, saying:

"A chief's daughter must have time to embroider her clothes. Come back
when I have made my cloth beautiful with a strip of beadwork a
hand's-breadth wide from end to end of the cloth."

[Illustration: FLUTE PLAYER
FROM A PAINTING BY J. H. SHARP]

But she was very lazy as well as proud, and she took the cloth to her
youngest sister, and said: "Embroider a beautiful strip, a
hand's-breadth wide, from end to end of the cloth."

Now the chief's youngest daughter was very beautiful; so her sisters
were jealous and made her live in the dark corner at the back of the
lodge, where no man could see her; but her eyes were very bright, and by
the light of her eyes she arranged the beads and sewed them on so that
the pattern was like the flowers of the earth and the stars of heaven,
it was so beautiful. But when the youngest daughter had fallen asleep at
night her eldest sister came softly and took away the cloth and picked
off the beads.

In the morning she went to her youngest sister and said, "Show me the
work you did yesterday."

And the youngest sister cried, and said, "Truly I worked as well as I
could, but some evil one has picked out the beads."

Then her sister scolded her, and pricked her with the needle, and said,
"You are lazy! Embroider this cloth, and do it beautifully, or I shall
beat you!"

This she did day after day, and whenever the young man came to see if
she was dressed for the wedding she showed him the cloth, and it was not
finished.

Now there was another brave young man in that village, and he came and
asked the chief for his second daughter.

The second daughter was as proud as the first, and said to herself, "One
day a great chief's son will come, and I will marry him." But she said
to the young man, "If you want me for your wife, you must build me a new
lodge, and cov