r-leaf, and
the Little People moved the fir-cones nearer to the edge and crouched
there waiting.

"Death to Kwasind!" they shouted in little voices as the canoe glided
underneath the rocks, "Death to Kwasind!" and they rained down showers
of blue fir-cones right on the defenseless head of the sleeping giant.

As a great boulder is tipped into a stream, Kwasind tottered sideways
from his canoe, struck the water with a sullen plunge that tossed the
spray high in the air, and the waters closed above him with a mighty
sob. Bottom upward his canoe drifted down the river, and nothing was
seen or heard of Kwasind from that day to this. But his memory lived
long among the Indians, who would tell their children of his great feats
of strength, and show to them the boulder that Kwasind had pitched into
the swift Pauwating River when he was little more than a boy.

When the gales of winter tossed the pine-trees and roared among the
branches until they groaned and split with a terrible noise of rending
wood, the Indians would say to one another, as they sat in their warm
wigwams and listened to the wind shake the forest to its roots: "There
goes Kwasind, gathering his firewood!" and in the country where he lived
near the Big-Sea-Water there are still many marks of his great strength
that will show, to any who care to see, what a mighty man this Kwasind
was.

XIX

THE GHOSTS

THE vulture never drops from the heavens to seize his prey upon the
desert but some other vulture views his plunge and follows swiftly.
Other vultures see the second, and in a few minutes their victim finds a
row of them before him and the air dark with their wings.

Just so do troubles come upon human beings, not one at a time but
together, until the unhappy man or woman finds the air as black as
midnight with their shadows, and in this way did troubles pursue the
unfortunate Hiawatha. First Chibiabos died--murdered by the evil
spirits. Then Kwasind was killed as he drifted down the stream asleep in
his canoe; and then in the dark winter, when the ice had bound the
rivers and the trees were naked in the bitter air, another sorrow came
upon Hiawatha. But before it came he had a strange adventure, and from
this he knew that he would be forced to undergo some mighty trial.

One black, wintry evening after the sun had set, Nokomis and Minnehaha
were sitting together in their wigwam waiting for Hiawatha to return
from the hunt, when they heard ligh