and off ran the wily fox with the stolen treasure in his mouth. The
raven flew away, and never was heard of again._]

Donee was a king's daughter. She had heard her father talk of the
battles into which he had led his mighty warriors, and of how all the
world that she knew had once been his, from the hills behind which the
sun rose to the broad rushing river where it set. Now all of this
account was strictly true.

But the king, as he talked, wore no clothes but a muddy pair of cotton
trousers, and sat on a log in the sun, a pig rooting about his bare
feet. Black Joe, going by, called him a lazy old red-skin; and that
was true, too. But these differing accounts naturally confused Donee's
mind. When the old chief was dead, however, there was an end of all
talk of his warriors or battles. A large part of the land was left,
though; a long stretch of river bottom and forests, with but very
little swamp. Donee's brother, Oostogah, when he was in a good humor,
planted and hoed a field of corn (as he had no wife to do it for him),
and with a little fish and game, they managed to find enough to eat.
Oostogah and the little girl lived in a hut built of logs and mud,
and, as the floor of it never had been scrubbed, the grass actually
began to grow out of the dirt in the corners. There was a log
smouldering on the hearth, where Donee baked cakes of pounded corn and
beans in the ashes, and on the other side of the dark room was the
heap of straw where she slept. Besides this, there were two hacked
stumps of trees which served for chairs, and an iron pot out of which
they ate; and there you have the royal plenishing of _that_ palace.

All the other Indians had long ago gone West. Donee had nothing and
nobody to play with. She was as easily scared as a rabbit; yet