hall afterward rejoin
the spirit, which you must now leave behind. She is accepted and will
be ever here, as young and as happy as she was when I first called her
from the land of snows." When this voice ceased, the narrator awoke.
It was all the fabric of a dream, and he was still in the bitter land
of snows, and hunger, and tears.

* * * * *

THE MAIDEN WHO LOVED A FISH

There was once among the Marshpees, a small tribe who have their
hunting-grounds on the shores of the Great Lake, near the Cape of
Storms, a woman whose name was Awashanks. She was rather silly and
very idle. For days together she would sit doing nothing. Then she was
so ugly and ill-shaped that not one of the youths of the village would
have aught to say to her by way of courtship or marriage. She squinted
very much; her face was long and thin, her nose excessively large and
humped, her teeth crooked and projecting, her chin almost as sharp
as the bill of a loon, and her ears as large as those of a deer.
Altogether she was a very odd and strangely formed woman, and wherever
she went she never failed to excite much laughter and derision among
those who thought that ugliness and deformity were fit subjects for
ridicule.

Though so very ugly, there was one faculty she possessed in a more
remarkable degree than any woman of the tribe. It was that of singing.
Nothing, unless such could be found in the land of spirits, could
equal the sweetness of her voice or the beauty of her songs. Her
favorite place of resort was a small hill, a little removed from the
river of her people, and there, seated beneath the shady trees, she
would while away the hours of summer with her charming songs. So
beautiful and melodious were the things she uttered that, by the time
she had sung a single sentence, the branches above her head would be
filled with the birds that came thither to listen, the thickets around
her would be crowded with beasts, and the waters rolling beside her
would be alive with fishes, all attracted by the sweet sounds. From
the minnow to the porpoise, from the wren to the eagle, from the snail
to the lobster, from the mouse to the mole--all hastened to the spot
to listen to the charming songs of the hideous Marshpee maiden.

Among the fishes which repaired every night to the vicinity of
the Little Hillock, which was the chosen resting-place of the ugly
songstress, was the great chief of the trouts, a tribe of