which the rich imagination of the Indian has woven into this old
legend.

It is said, for example, that at his first camp he had built
for himself a lodge of green boughs in the midst of the forest, and
that there his reverie was interrupted by a voice from the
wilderness--a voice that was irresistibly and profoundly sweet. In
some mysterious way, the soul of the young man was touched as it had
never been before, for this call of exquisite tenderness and
allurement was the voice of the eternal woman!

Presently a charming little girl stood timidly at the door of
his pine-bough wigwam. She was modestly dressed in gray, with a
touch of jet about her pretty face, and she carried a basket of
wild cherries which she shyly offered to the young man. So the
rover was subdued, and love turned loose upon the world to upbuild
and to destroy! When at last she left him, he peeped
through the door after her, but saw only a robin, with head turned
archly to one side, fluttering away among the trees.

His next camp was beside a clear, running stream, where a
plump and industrious maid was busily at work chopping wood. He
fell promptly in love with her also, and for some time they lived
together in her cosy house by the waterside. After their boy was
born, the wanderer wished very much to go back to his Elder Brother
and to show him his wife and child. But the beaver-woman refused
to go, so at last he went alone for a short visit. When he
returned, there was only a trickle of water beside the
broken dam, the beautiful home was left desolate, and wife and
child were gone forever!