172 GLOOSCAP AND OTHER STORIES

One thing he did not know, however, and that was that the Weasels had gained wisdom by experience, and were not above playing a. trick of their own.

Now the Weasel girls had promised to marry anyone who would rescue them, but they had no intention of doing this. So they planned to deceive the merry Badger. The elder sister took off her hair-string, and tied it in a great many knots among the twigs of the tree, tan~ gling it until it would seem a week’s work to unwind it.

When the Badger had very politely climbed the tree, and had taken the younger Weasel girl down, he came back for the elder sister. When she was safely on the ground, she said:

“I thank you, and now will you be kind enough to go up the tree again, and get my hair—string which is caught in the branches? I prize it very much, and it would break my heart if it were lost or broken; so you must untie it very carefully, and while you are gone my sis— ter and I will build a beautiful Wigwam, and we will furnish it as you never saw a wigwam furnished before.”

This the Badger soon found to be true. He went up the tree after the hair-string, and the Weasels set to work to make their Wigwam. Now the Weasel girls happened to be friends of many strange creatures: the Thorns, the