“She say I no right here,” he said.  “She suffer for it.  She wah-wah.  Look out for the October moon.”

“No, you are a better Indian now.”

“Yes; sometimes.”

“The better Indian harms no one—­one’s good self never does evil.  You are to be your good self, and please me.”

The young Indian was silent for a time.  He at last said, slowly: 

“But me know who will.”

“Do what, Benjamin?”

“Make her suffer—­punish.”

“Who?”

“I know a bad Indian who will.  He say so.”

“You must not let him.  You are son of a chief.”

“I will try.  I no wah-wah now.”

At noon Benjamin was light-hearted, and led the sports and games.  He was very strong, and one of his lively feats was to let three or four children climb upon his back and run away with them until they tumbled off.  He seemed perfectly happy when he was making the others happy, and nothing so delighted him as to be commended.  He longed to be popular, not from any selfish reason, but because to be liked by others was his atmosphere of contentment.  He was kindly above most Indians, a trait for which his father was famous.  He was even kindly above many of the white people.

The next morning he came to school in good humor, and a curious incident occurred soon after the school began.  A little black bear ventured down the trail toward the open door, stopping at times and lifting up its head curiously and cautiously.  It at last ventured up to the door, put its fore feet on the door-sill, and looked into the room.

“Kill it!” cried one of the boys, a recent emigrant, in the alarm.  “Kill it!”

“What harm it do?” said the Indian boy.  “Me drive it away.”

The young Indian started toward the door as at play, and shook his head at the young bear, which was of the harmless kind so well known in the Northwest, and the bear turned and ran, while the Indian followed it toward the wood.  The odd event was quite excusable on any ground of rule and propriety in the primitive school.

“It no harm; let it go,” said the boy on his return; and the spirit of the incident was good and educational in the hearts of the school.

The charm of his life was Gretchen’s violin.  It transfigured him; it changed the world to him.  His father was a forest philosopher; the boy caught a like spirit, and often said things that were a revelation to Mr. Mann.

“Why do you like the violin so much?” said the latter to him one day.

“It brings to me the thing longed for—­the thing I long to know.”

“Why, what is that?”

“I can’t tell it—­I feel it here—­I sense it—­I shall know—­something better—­yonder—­the thing we long for, but do not know.  Don’t you long for it?  Don’t you feel it?”

The tall schoolmaster said “Yes,” and was thoughtful.  The poor Indian had tried to express that something beyond his self of which he could only now have a dim conception, and about which even science is dumb.  Mr. Mann understood it, but he could hardly have expressed it better.