When Hiawatha and his fair bride reached their home, old Nokomis prepared a sumptuous wedding-feast to which many guests were bidden. Among them was a handsome but idle and mischievous youth named Pau-Puk-Keewis, who was renowned for his skill in all sports and pastimes. To please the company he rose from his seat and danced his merry dances to the music of flutes and drums. Then the sweet singer, Chibiabos, sang a melodious love-song, and when this was finished, Iagoo the Boaster, jealous of the praise and applause bestowed on the musician, told one of his most marvelous stories, and well pleased the wedding-guests took their departure. As the days went on, old Nokomis found that her grumblings about the uselessness of a wife from a far-off land had not been justified, for Minnehaha was as skilled with her fingers as she was beautiful, and Hiawatha loved her more and more dearly. [Illustration] Once, when all the maize was planted, Hiawatha bade his wife go alone at night, clothed only in her dark tresses, and draw a magic circle round the cornfield, so that no blight or insect might injure the harvest. This Minnehaha did, but the King of Ravens and his band of followers, who were perched on the tree-tops overlooking the cornfield, laughed with glee to think that Hiawatha had forgotten what mischief they could do. So early on the morrow all the black thieves, crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens, flew down on the field, and with claws and beak began to dig up the buried grain. But the wary Hiawatha had over-heard the birds' mocking laughter and, rising before daybreak, had scattered snares over the fields. Thus it happened that the birds found their claws all entangled in the snares, and Hiawatha, coming out from the hiding-place where he had been watching them, killed them without mercy; only one was spared, the King of Ravens himself, whom Hiawatha pinioned with a strong rope and fastened to the ridge-pole of his wigwam as a warning to all other thieves. [Illustration] Now it chanced one day that the mischievous Pau-Puk-Keewis wandered through the village and reaching the farthest wigwam, which was that of Hiawatha, found it deserted. The raven perched on the ridge-pole, flapped his wings, and screamed at the intruder; but Pau-Puk-Keewis twisted the poor bird's neck and left the lifeless body dangling from the roof; then he entered the lodge and threw all the household things into the wildest disorder as an insult to the careful Nokomis and the beautiful Minnehaha. Satisfied with the mischief he had done, Pau-Puk-Keewis climbed a rocky headland overlooking the lake and amused himself by killing the sea-gulls as they fluttered round him.