that she ought to have gone home long
before.

"Now I must go back to my husband," she said.

"That you shall never do!" said her father.

And he shut her up in a white cloud and said she should stay there
till she promised never to go back to the prairie. She begged to be
let out, but it was no use.

Then she began to weep; and she wept so much that the cloud began to
weep too, and it was weeping itself quite away. So her father saw she
would go down to the earth in rain if he kept her in the cloud any
longer, and he let her out.

"What must I do for you," he said, "to make you stay with us here and
be happy?"

"I will not stay here," she said, "unless my husband comes and lives
here too."

"I will send for him at once," said her father. So he sent the basket
down empty, and it rested in the middle of the dancing ring.

Now when High-feather reached Loon Lake he found it covered with red
swans. He shot two with one arrow, and then all the rest flew away.
He picked up the two swans and hurried back to his tent, and there lay
the dancing-cloth with the feather stars on it half finished, but no
wife could he see. He called her, but she did not answer. He rushed
out, with the two red swans still slung round his neck and hanging
down his back, and ran to the dancing ring, but nobody was there.

"I will wait till she comes back," he said to himself, "if I have to
wait till the world ends." So he threw himself down on the grass and
lay looking up at the stars till he went to sleep.

Early in the morning he heard a rustling on the grass, and when he
opened his eyes he saw the great basket close beside him. He jumped
up, with the two red swans still slung round his neck, and climbed
into the basket. There was nobody there; and when he began to climb
out again he found that the basket was half way up to the sky. It went
up and up, and at last it came into the Star-country, where his wife
was waiting for him. Her father gave them a beautiful blue tent to
live in, and High-feather was happy enough for a while; but he soon
grew tired of the cloud-berries that the Star-people ate, and he
longed to tramp over the solid green prairie, so he asked his wife's
father to let him take her back to the earth.

"No," said the Star-man, "because then I should never see her again.
If you stay with us you will soon forget the dull old earth."

The young man said nothing; but he put on the wings of one of the red
swans, and he pu