One day, as he was lying in the meadow among the wild flowers, completely covered with butterflies of the most brilliant hues, as if it were a gorgeous cloak that he was wearing, there suddenly appeared before him a beautiful young girl.
The youth was startled, for he knew her face. He had seen her often; it was the chiefs daughter, the prettiest maiden in the village, who had died ten days before!
The truth was that she had loved this young man in secret, but he had given no thought to her, for he cared only for the wild creatures and had no mind for human ways. Now, as she stood silently before him with downcast eyes, he looked upon her pure face and graceful form, and there awoke in his heart the love that he had never felt before.
"But she is a spirit now!" he said to himself sorrowfully, and dared not speak to her.
However, she smiled archly upon him, in his strange and beautiful garment, for she read his thoughts. Toward sunset, the butterflies flew away, and with them the ghost maiden departed.
After this the young man was absent more than ever, and no one knew that the spirit of the maiden came to him in the deep woods. He built for her a lodge of pine boughs, and there she would come to cook his venison and to mend his moccasins, and sit with him beside his lonely camp-fire.
But at last he was not content with this and begged her to go with him to the village, for his mother and kinsfolk would not allow him to remain always away from them.
"Ah, my spirit wife," he begged, "can you not return with me to my people, so that I may have a home in their sight?"
"It may be so," she replied thoughtfully, "if you will carefully observe my conditions. First, we must pitch our tent a little apart from the rest of the people. Second, you must patiently bear with my absences and the strangeness of my behavior, for I can only visit them and they me in the night time. Third, you must never raise your voice in our teepee, and above all, let me never hear you speak roughly to a child in my presence!"