wolves."

The Listening Crane was a patient man; he was the "man that waits" of
the old French proverb; all things came to him. He had waited for an
opportunity to change his brother's mind, and it had come. Again, he
waited for him to die; and, like Methuselah and others, he died. He had
heard of a race more powerful than the Natchez--a white race; he waited
for them; and when the year 1682 saw a humble "black gown" dragging and
splashing his way, with La Salle and Tonti, through the swamps of
Louisiana, holding forth the crucifix and backed by French carbines and
Mohican tomahawks, among the marvels of that wilderness was found this:
a child of nine sitting, and--with some unostentatious aid from her
medicine-man--ruling; queen of her tribe and high-priestess of their
temple. Fortified by the acumen and self-collected ambition of Listening
Crane, confirmed in her regal title by the white man's Manitou through
the medium of the "black gown," and inheriting her father's
fear-compelling frown, she ruled with majesty and wisdom, sometimes a
decreer of bloody justice, sometimes an Amazonian counselor of
warriors, and at all times--year after year, until she had reached the
perfect womanhood of twenty-six--a virgin queen.

On the 11th of March, 1699, two overbold young Frenchmen of M.
D'Iberville's little exploring party tossed guns on shoulder, and
ventured away from their canoes on the bank of the Mississippi into the
wilderness. Two men they were whom an explorer would have been justified
in hoarding up, rather than in letting out at such risks; a pair to lean
on, noble and strong. They hunted, killed nothing, were overtaken by
rain, then by night, hunger, alarm, despair.

And when they had lain down to die, and had only succeeded in falling
asleep, the Diana of the Tchoupitoulas, ranging the magnolia groves with
bow and quiver, came upon them in all the poetry of their hope-forsaken
strength and beauty, and fell sick of love. We say not whether with
Zephyr Grandissime or Epaminondas Fusilier; that, for the time being,
was her secret.

The two captives were made guests. Listening Crane rejoiced in them as
representatives of the great gift-making race, and indulged himself in a
dream of pipe-smoking, orations, treaties, presents and alliances,
finding its climax in the marriage of his virgin queen to the king of
France, and unvaryingly tending to the swiftly increasing aggrandizement
of Listening Crane. They sat down