gly; you have been dipping your face in the mud. And you are very
lazy, for your embroidery is not finished."

"Great chief," said she, "I will wash the clay from my face, and I will
go and finish the embroidery and make a robe fit for a maiden who is to
marry the great chief."

Then the voice said, "How can you marry a man you cannot see?"

"Oh," she said, "I can see you as plainly as the lodge and the fire. I
can see you quite plainly, sitting beside the fire."

"Then tell me what I am like," said he.

"You are the handsomest of men," she said, "straight of back and brown
of skin."

"Go home," said the voice, "and learn to speak truth."

When she came back to the lodge, she flung the red cloth down on the
ground without speaking.

Then the old chief said to his second daughter, "Your sister has failed;
it must be you that the great chief will marry."

So the second daughter picked up the beaver curtain and flung it round
her, and ran to the empty lodge; and, being crafty, she cried aloud as
she came near, "Oh! What a handsome chief you are!"

"How do you know I am handsome?" said the voice. "Tell me what clothes I
wear."

So she guessed in her mind, and, looking on the painted lodge, she said,
"A robe of buckskin, with wonderful animals painted on it."

"Go home," said the voice, "and learn to speak truth."

Then she slunk away home, and squatted on the ground before the lodge,
with her chin on her breast.

Now, when the youngest daughter saw that both her sisters had failed,
she said to herself, "They tell me I am very thin and ugly, but I will
go and try if I can see this great chief." So she pushed aside a corner
of the birch-bark, slipped out at the back of the lodge, and stole away
to the painted lodge; and there, sitting by his fire on the ground, she
saw a wonderful great chief, with skin as white as midwinter snow,
dressed in a long robe of red and blue and green and yellow stripes.

He smiled on her as she stood humbly before him, and said, "Tell me now,
chief's daughter, what I am like, and what I wear!"

And she said, "Your face is like a cloud in the north when the sun
shines bright from the south; and your robe is like the arch in the sky
when the sun shines on the rain."

Then he stood up and took her for his wife, and carried her away to live
in his own country.

THE FIRE BRINGER[S]

BY MARY AUSTIN

They ranged together by wood and open swale, the boy who was to be
call