blanket, she would hasten to meet him, and listen to his assurances of
affection, wondering the while that she had ever feared he
loved another.

She had been some months at the village of Markeda, and she went to meet
her lover with a heavy heart. Her mother had noticed that her looks were
sad and heavy, and Wenona knew that it would not be long ere she should
be a happy wife, or a mark for the bitter scorn of her companions.

The Deer-killer had promised, day after day, that he would make her his
wife, but he ever found a ready excuse; and now he was going on a long
hunt, and she and her parents were to return to their village. His
quiver was full of arrows, and his leggins were tightly girded upon him.
Wenona's full heart was nigh bursting as she heard that the party were
to leave to-morrow. Should he desert her, her parents would kill her for
disgracing them; and her rival, Wanska, how would she triumph over
her fall?

"You say that you love me," said she to the Deer-killer, "and yet you
treat me cruelly. Why should you leave me without saying that I am your
wife? Who would watch for your coming as I would? and you will disgrace
me when I have loved you so truly. Stay--tell them you have made me your
wife, and then will I wait for you at the door of my teepee."

The warrior could not stay from the chase, but he promised her that he
would soon return to their village, and then she should be his wife.

Wenona wept when he left her; shadows had fallen upon her heart, and yet
she hoped on. Turning her weary steps homeward, she arrived there when
the maidens of the village were preparing to celebrate the
Virgin's Feast.

There was no time to deliberate--should she absent herself, she would be
suspected, and yet a little while ere the Deer-killer would return, and
her anxious heart would be at rest.

The feast was prepared, and the crier called for all virgins to enter
the sacred ring.

Wenona went forward with a beating heart; she was not a wife, and soon
must be a mother. Wanska, the Merry Heart, was there, and many others
who wondered at the pale looks of Wenona--she who had been on a journey,
and who ought to have returned with color bright as the dying sun, whose
light illumined earth, sky and water.

As they entered the ring a party of warriors approached the circle.
Wenona does not look towards them, and yet the throbbings of her heart
were not to be endured. Her trembling limbs refused to sustain her, a