Benjamin did not comprehend the words, but he felt that the woman had said something injurious to him.  The suspicion cut him to the quick.  His black eye sparkled and his cheek burned.  The scholars all seemed to be sorry at the impression that Mrs. Woods’s muttered words had left in his mind.  He had struggled for two days to do his best—­to follow his best self.

School closed.  Benjamin rose like a statue.  He stood silent for a time and looked at the slanting sun and the dreamy afternoon glories of the glaciers, then moved silently out of the door.  The old chief met him in the opening, and saw the hurt and troubled look in his face.

“What have you been doing to my boy?” he said to the master.  “Has he not been good?”

“Very good; I like him,” said Mr. Mann.  “He is trying to be good here,” pointing to his heart.  “The good in him will grow.  I will help him.”

The old chief and the boy walked away slowly out of the shadows of the great trees and up the cool trail.  The tall master followed them with his eye.  In the departing forms he saw a picture of the disappearing race.  He knew history well, and how it would repeat itself on the great plateau and amid the giant forests of the Oregon.  He felt that the old man was probably one of the last great chiefs of the Umatillas.

On one of the peninsulas of the Oregon, the so-called Islands of the Dead, the old warriors of the tribes were being gathered by the plagues that had come to the territories and tribal regions ever since the Hudson Bay Company established its posts on the west of the mountains, and Astoria had been planted on the great river, and settlers had gathered in the mountain-domed valley of the Willamette.  Wherever the white sail went in the glorious rivers, pestilence came to the native tribes.  The Indian race was perceptibly vanishing.  Only one son of seven was left to Umatilla.  What would be the fate of this boy?

The master went home troubled over the event of the afternoon.  He was asking the Indian to be better than his opponent, and she was a well-meaning woman and nominally a Christian.

His first thought was to go to Mrs. Woods and ask her to wholly change her spirit and manners, and, in fact, preach to her the same simple doctrine of following only one’s better self that he had taught to the young prince.  But he well knew that she had not a teachable mind.  He resolved to try to reach the same result through Gretchen, whom she upbraided with her tongue but loved in her heart.

Mrs. Woods had come to regard it as her appointed mission to abuse people for their good.  She thought it tended toward their spiritual progress and development.  She often said that she felt “called to set things right, and not let two or three people have their own way in everything”—­a view of life not uncommon among people of larger opportunities and better education.

Benjamin came to school the next morning silent and sullen, and the master went to him again in the same spirit as before.