elonging to his mistress.

The young man saw him coming with amazement.

'Why, it is a buffalo!' cried he; 'I never have beheld one in this
country before!' And raising his gun, he aimed just behind the ear.

The buffalo gave a leap into the air, and then fell dead.

'It was a good shot,' said the young man. And he ran to the village to
tell them that the thief was punished.

When he entered his hut he found his wife, who had somehow heard the
news, twisting herself to and fro and shedding tears.

'Are you ill?' asked he. And she answered: 'Yes; I have pains all over
my body.' But she was not ill at all, only very unhappy at the death of
the buffalo which had served her so well. Her husband felt anxious, and
sent for the medicine man; but though she pretended to listen to him,
she threw all his medicine out of the door directly he had gone away.

With the first rays of light the whole village was awake, and the women
set forth armed with baskets and the men with knives in order to cut up
the buffalo. Only the girl remained in her hut; and after a while she
too went to join them, groaning and weeping as she walked along.

'What are you doing here?' asked her husband when he saw her. 'If you
are ill you are better at home.'

'Oh! I could not stay alone in the village,' said she. And her
mother-in-law left off her work to come and scold her, and to tell her
that she would kill herself if she did such foolish things. But the girl
would not listen and sat down and looked on.

When they had divided the buffalo's flesh, and each woman had the family
portion in her basket, the stranger wife got up and said:

'Let me have the head.'

'You could never carry anything so heavy,' answered the men, 'and now
you are ill besides.'

'You do not know how strong I am,' answered she. And at last they gave
it her.

She did not walk to the village with the others, but lingered behind,
and, instead of entering her hut, she slipped into the little shed where
the pots for cooking and storing maize were kept. Then she laid down
the buffalo's head and sat beside it. Her husband came to seek her, and
begged her to leave the shed and go to bed, as she must be tired out;
but the girl would not stir, neither would she attend to the words of
her mother-in-law.

'I wish you would leave me alone!' she answered crossly. 'It is
impossible to sleep if somebody is always coming in.' And she turned her
back on them, and would not even eat t