tle was
fought, and who fell; you have showed the spent quiver, and the seven
scalps, one of which has shining hair, but you have not spoken of your
prisoner. The Great Spirit keeps nothing hid from his priests, of whom
Chenos is one. He has told me you have a prisoner, one with tender feet
and a trembling heart."

"Let any one say the Mad Buffalo ever lied," said the head warrior. "He
never spoke but truth. He has a prisoner, a woman, taken from the
strange camp; a daughter of the sun; a maiden from the happy islands,
which no Shawano has ever seen. And as soon as I have built my house,
and gathered in my corn, and hunted, and brought home my meat, she shall
live with me and become the mother of my children."

"Where is she?" asked the head chief.

"She sits on the bank of the river, at the bend where we dug up the
bones of the great beast, beneath the tree which the Master of Breath
shivered with his lightnings. I placed her there because the spot is
sacred, and none dare disturb her. I will go and fetch her to the
council fire. But let no one touch her, or show anger, for she is
fearful as a young deer, and weeps like a child for its mother."

Soon he returned, and brought with him a woman whose face was hidden by
a veil whiter than the clouds. The head chief bade her, by signs, to
throw the covering from her face, and stand forth before the council.
She did so; but she shook like a reed in the winter's wind, and many
tears ran down her cheeks, though the head warrior kept at her side,
and with his eyes bade her fear nothing. The Indians sat as though their
tongues were frozen, they were so much taken with the strange woman.
Well might they be. Why? Was she beautiful? Go forth to the forest when
it is clothed with the flowers of spring, look at the tall maize when it
waves in the wind, and ask if they are beautiful. Her skin was white as
the snow which falls upon the mountains beyond our lands, save upon her
cheeks, where it was red; not such red as the Indian paints when he goes
to war, but such as the Master of Life gives to the flower which grows
among thorns. Her eyes shone like the star which never moves[A], and
which guides the bewildered Indian hunter through the untravelled
wilderness to his home. Her hair curled over her head like wild vines
around a tree, and hung upon her brow in clusters, like bunches of
grapes. Her step was like that of a deer when he is scared a little. The
Great Spirit never made a