on little drums of eagle-skin, and singing such beautiful
songs as High-feather had never heard.

Then High-feather jumped up and ran towards the ring, crying out, "Let
me dance and sing with you!"

The maidens were frightened, and ran to the basket and jumped in,
and the basket flew up into the sky, and grew smaller till at last he
could not see it at all.

The young man went home to his wigwam, and his mother roasted buffalo
meat for his dinner; but he could not eat, and he could not think of
anything but the twelve beautiful maidens. His mother begged him to
tell her what the matter was; and at last he told her, and said he
would never be happy till he brought one of the maidens home to be his
wife.

"Those must be the Star-people," said his mother, who was a great
magician--the prairie was full of magic in those days, before the
white man came and the buffalo went. "You had better take an Indian
girl for your wife. Don't think any more of the Star-maidens, or you
will have much trouble."

"I care little how much trouble I have, so long as I get a Star-maiden
for my wife," he said; "and I am going to get one, if I have to wait
till the world ends."

"If you must, you must," said his mother.

So next morning she sewed a bit of gopher's fur on to his feather;
and he ate a good breakfast of buffalo meat and tramped away over
the prairie to the dancing ring. As soon as he came into the ring he
turned into a gopher; but there were no gophers' holes there for him
to hide in, so he had to lie in the grass and wait.

Presently he saw a speck up in the sky, and the speck grew larger and
larger till it became a basket, and the basket came down and down till
it rested on the earth in the middle of the ring.

The eldest maiden put her head over the edge and looked all around,
north and east and south and west.

"There is no man here," she said. So they all jumped out to have their
dance. But before they came to the beaten ring the youngest maiden
spied the gopher, and called out to her sisters to look at it.

"Away! away!" cried the eldest maiden. "No gopher would dare to come
on our dancing ground. It is a conjuror in disguise!"

So she took her youngest sister by the arm and pulled her away to the
basket, and they all jumped in and the basket went sailing up into
the sky before High-feather could get out of his gopher skin or say a
word.

The young man went home very miserable; but when his mother heard what