er the door of it with a curtain of beaver-skins."

The young man smiled in his heart, for he said to himself, "This is
easy; this is child's play." So he built a new lodge, and hung a curtain
of beaver-skins over the door.

But when the chief's daughter saw the curtain, she said, "I should be
ashamed to live behind a curtain of plain beaver-skins like that! Go and
hunt for porcupines, that the curtain may be embroidered with their
quills."

So he took his bow and his arrows and went away through the woods to
hunt. Twelve days he marched, till he came to the porcupines' country.
When the porcupines saw him coming; they ran to meet him, crying out,
"Don't kill us! We will give you all the quills that you want." And
while he stood doubting, the porcupines turned round, and shot their
prickly quills out at him so that they stuck in his body. And the
porcupines ran away into hiding before he could shoot.

Then the young man, because he had been gone so long already, did not
chase the porcupines, but left the quills sticking in his body and went
back to the village, saying to himself, "She will see how brave I am,
that I care nothing for the pain of the porcupine quills."

But when the chief's daughter saw him she only laughed and said:

"You cannot deceive me! It was never heard that a chief's daughter
married a man who was not brave. If you were brave, you would have
twenty Iroquois scalps hanging from your belt. It is easy to hunt
porcupines; go and hunt the Iroquois, that I may embroider the curtain
black and white with the porcupine-quills and the Iroquois hair."

Then the young man's heart grew cold; but he took his bow and arrows and
went through the woods; and when he came near the Iroquois town he lay
down on his face and slipped through the bushes like a snake. When an
Iroquois came to hunt in the woods, he shot the Iroquois and took his
scalp; and this he did till he had twenty scalps on his belt.

Now all the time that he lay in the bushes by the Iroquois town he ate
nothing but wild strawberries, for the blueberries were not yet ripe; so
when he came to his own village and called to the chief's second
daughter, she said:

"You are an ill-looking man for a chief's daughter to marry. You are
like a porcupine-quill yourself. Nevertheless, I am not like my sister,
and I will marry you as soon as the curtain is embroidered."

Then she took the curtain of beaver-skin and gave it to her youngest
sister, and