he wicked shouting of the evil spirits. He gave
such a cry of sorrow that the forest trembled, and the wolves on the
prairie raised their heads to listen and then howled in answer, while
the hoarse thunder stirred itself among the mountains and awakened all
the echoes to his cry.

Then Hiawatha smeared his face with black paint, the color of sorrow and
of death; he covered his head with his robe and sat for seven long weeks
in his wigwam, grieving for the murdered Chibiabos. And the fir-trees
sadly waved their dark green branches to and fro above his head and
sighed as mournfully as Hiawatha.

Spring came, and all the birds and animals, and even the rivulets, and
flowers and grasses, looked in vain for the dead Chibiabos. The bluebird
sang a song of sorrow from the tree-tops; the robin echoed it from the
silence of the thicket, and the whippoorwill took up the sad refrain at
night and wailed it far and wide through all the woodland. "Chibiabos!
Chibiabos!" murmured every living thing, and all the echoes sighed in
answer until the whole world seemed to mourn for the lost singer.

Then the wise men of the tribes--the medicine-men, the men of
magic--came to Hiawatha as he sat in sorrow in his hut, and they walked
before him in a grave procession to drive the sadness from his heart.
Each of them carried a pouch of healing, made of beaver-skin or lynx or
otter, and filled with roots and herbs of wonderful power to cure all
diseases and to drive the evil spirits of grief from the heart and from
the mind. To and fro they walked, until Hiawatha uncovered his head,
washed the black paint from his face, and followed the wise men to the
Sacred Lodge that they had built beside his own wigwam.

There they gave to Hiawatha a marvelous drink made of spearmint and
yarrow and all sorts of strange and different roots, and when he had
drunk of this they began a wild and mystic dance, beating on the small
drums that they carried, and shaking their pouches of healing in the
face of Hiawatha. "_Hi-au-ha!_" they shouted in strange voices,
"_way-ha-way!_ We can cure you, Hiawatha; we can make you strong." And
they shook their medicine pouches over Hiawatha's head, and continued
beating on their hollow drums, as they circled wildly around him again
and again.

All at once the sorrow left Hiawatha's heart, as the ice is swept from
a river in the springtime, and like a man awakening from evil dreams he
felt that he was healed, and he gazed a