all, at the time the chestnuts were in blossom, my daughter Mimi,--the
Master of Life called them one by one. I have washed my face, and I
have combed my hair, yet who can say I have not mourned? My life has
been as dead as the dried grass that thatches the muskrat's lodges.
When have any of you seen Onanguissé smile? Yet think not that I
stretch out my hands to the country of souls. I will live, and sit at
the council fire till many of you who are before me have evaporated
like smoke from a pipe. For I am of the race of the bear, and the bear
never yields while one drop of blood is left. And the Master of Life
has been kind. He has brought me at last a woman who has an eagle's
eyesight and a bear's endurance. She is worthy to be of my family. I
have waited for such an one. Her speech is strange, but her blood
answers mine. It is idle to mourn. I will replace the dead with the
living. This woman shall be no more the white thrush. She shall be
Mimi, the turtle dove, the daughter of Onanguissé. Brethren, bear
witness. Mimi is no longer dead. She stands here." He stepped closer
to the woman. "I give you this cloak that you may wrap me in your
memory," he went on. "I hereby confirm my words;" and thereupon, he
threw over her shoulders a long, shining mantle made of the small skins
of the white hare. It was a robe for an empress.

I stepped forward, then stood still, and resolved to trust the woman as
she had asked.

"You are adopted," I prompted softly, with no motion of my lips.

She understood. Wrapped in her white cloak, she curtsied low before
Onanguissé. Then she turned to me. "Tell him," she said, "that my
heart is wiser than my tongue; the one is dumb, but the other answers.
Say to him that I see his face, and it tells me that he has lived