She tied her pink hat-ribbons under her chin and stood up while I made ready; then I lifted her from the ground. Very gravely she dropped her arms around my neck as I stepped into the rushing current and waded out, the water curling almost to my knee-buckles. So we crossed the grist-mill stream in silence, eyes averted from each other's faces; and in silence, too, we resumed the straight and narrow path, now deep with last year's leaves, until we came to a hot, sandy bank covered with wild strawberries, overlooking the stream. In a moment she was on her knees, filling her handkerchief with strawberries, and I sat down in the yellow sand, eyes following the stream where it sparkled deep under its leafy screen below. "Cousin," she said, timidly, "are you displeased?" "Why?" "At my tyranny to make you bear me across the stream--with all your heavier burdens, and my own--" "I ask no sweeter burdens," I replied. She seated herself in the sand and placed a scarlet berry between lips that matched it. "I have tried very hard to talk to you," she said. "I don't know what to say, Dorothy," I muttered. "Truly I do desire to amuse you and make you laugh--as once I did. But the heart of everything seems dead. There! I did not mean that! Don't hide your face, Dorothy! Don't look like that! I--I cannot bear it. And listen, cousin; we are to be quite happy. I have thought it all out, and I mean to be gay and amuse you.... Won't you look at me, Dorothy?" "Wh--why?" she asked, unsteadily. "Just to see how happy I am--just to see that I pull no long faces--idiot that I was!... Dorothy, will you smile just once?" "Yes," she whispered, lifting her head and raising her wet lashes. Presently her lips parted in one of her adorable smiles. "Now that you have made me weep till my nose is red you may pick me every strawberry in sight," she said, winking away the bright tears. "You have heard of the penance of the Algonquin witch?" I knew nothing of Northern Indian lore, and I said so. "What? You never heard of the Stonish Giants? You never heard of the Flying Head? Mercy on the boy! Sit here and we'll eat strawberries and I shall tell you tales of the Long House.... Sit nearer, for I shall speak in a low voice lest old Atotarho awake from his long sleep and the dead pines ring hollow, like witch-drums under the yellow-hammer's double blows.... Are you afraid?" "All a-shiver," I whispered, gayly. "Then listen," she breathed, raising one pink-tipped finger. "This is the tale of the Eight Thunders, told in the oldest tongue of the confederacy and to all ensigns of the three clans ere the Erians sued for peace. Therefore it is true. "Long ago, the Holder of the Heavens made a very poisonous blue otter, and the Mohawks killed it and threw its body into the lake. And the Holder of Heaven came to the eastern door of the Long House and knocked, saying: 'Where is the very poisonous blue otter that I made, O Keepers of the Eastern Door?'