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When the girls of the neighboring lodges assembled to play at the favorite female game of pappus-e-ko-waun, or the block and string, before the lodge-door, Leelinau would sit vacantly by, or enter so feebly into the spirit of the play as to show that it was irksome to her.

Again, in the evening, when the young people formed a ring around the lodge, and the piepeend-jigun, or leather and bone, passed rapidly from one to the other, she either handed it along without attempting to play, or if she took a part, it was with no effort to succeed.

The time of the corn-gathering had come, and the young people of the tribe were assembled in the field, busy in plucking the ripened maize. One of the girls, noted for her beauty, had found a red ear, and every one congratulated her that a brave admirer was on his way to her father’s lodge. She blushed, and hiding the trophy in her bosom, she thanked the Good Spirit that it was a red ear, and not a crooked, that she had found.

Presently it chanced that one who was there among the young men, espied in the hands of Leelinau, who had plucked it indifferently, one of the crooked kind, and at once the word “Wa-ge-min!” was shouted aloud through the field, and the whole circle was set in a roar.

“The thief is in the corn-field!” exclaimed the young man, Iagoo by name, and famous in the tribe for his mirthful powers of story-telling; “see you not the old man stooping as he enters the field? See you not signs that he crouched as he crept in the dark? Is it not plain by this mark on the stalk that he was heavily bent in his back? Old man! be nimble, or some one will take thee while thou art taking the ear.”

These questions Iagoo accompanied with the action of one bowed with age stealthily entering the corn-field. He went on:

“See how he stoops as he breaks off the ear. Nushka! He seems for a moment to tremble. Walker, be nimble! Hooh! It is plain the old man is the thief.”

He turned suddenly where she sat in the circle, pensively regarding the crooked ear which she held in her hand, and exclaimed:

“Leelinau, the old man is thine!”

Laughter rung merrily through the corn-field, but Leelinau, casting down upon the ground the crooked ear of maize, walked pensively away.

The next morning the eldest son of a neighboring chief called at her father’s lodge. He was quite advanced in years; but he enjoyed such renown in battle, and his name was so famous in the hunt, that the parents accepted him as a suitor for their daughter. They hoped that his shining qualities would draw back the thoughts of Leelinau from that spirit-land whither she seemed to have wholly directed her affections.

It was this chief’s son whom Iagoo had pictured as the corn-taker, but, without objecting to his age, or giving any other reason, Leelinau firmly declined his proposals. The parents ascribed the young daughter’s hesitancy to maiden fear, and paying no further heed to her refusal, a day was fixed for the marriage-visit to the lodge.

The young warrior came to the lodge-door, and Leelinau refused to see him; informing her parents, at the same time, that she would never consent to the match.

It had been her custom to pass many of her hours in her favorite place of retirement, under a broad-topped young pine, whose leaves whispered in every wind that blew; but most of all in that gentle murmur of the air at the evening hour, dear to lovers, when the twilight steals on.

Thither she now repaired, and, while reclining pensively against the young pine-tree, she fancied that she heard a voice addressing her. At first it was scarcely more than a sigh; presently it grew more clear, and she heard it distinctly whisper–