The boy learned the alphabet quickly, and began to demand constant attention in his eagerness to learn.  Mr. Mann found that he was giving more than the allotted time to him.  To meet the case, he appointed from time to time members of the school “monitors,” as he called them, to sit beside him and help him.

One day he asked Gretchen to do this work.  The boy was delighted to be instructed by the mistress of the violin, and she was as pleased with the honor of such monitorial duties to the son of a chief.  But an unexpected episode grew out of all this mutual good-will and helpful kindness.

Benjamin was so grateful to Gretchen for the pains that she took with his studies that he wished to repay her.  He had a pretty little Cayuse pony which he used to ride; one day after school he caused it to be brought to the school-house, and, setting Gretchen upon it, he led it by the mane up the trail toward her home, a number of the pupils following them.  On the way the merry-making party met Mrs. Woods.  She was as astonished as though she had encountered an elephant, and there came into her face a look of displeasure and anger.

“What kind of doings are these, I would like to know?” she exclaimed, in a sharp tone, standing in the middle of the way and scanning every face.  “Riding out with an Injun, Gretchen, are you?  That’s what you are doing.  Girl, get off that horse and come with me!  That is the kind of propriety that they teach out in these parts, is it? and the master came from Harvard College, too!  One would think that this world was just made to enjoy one’s self in, just like a sheep pasture, where the lambs go hopping and skipping, not knowing that they were born to be fleeced.”

She hurried Gretchen away excitedly, and the school turned back.  Benjamin was disappointed, and looked more hurt than ever before.  On the way he met his old father, who had come out to look for him, and the rest of the scholars dispersed to their homes.

That evening, after a long, vivid twilight, such as throws its splendor over the mountain ranges in these northern latitudes, Mrs. Woods and Gretchen were sitting in their log-house just within the open door.  Mr. Woods was at the block-house at Walla Walla, and the cabin was unprotected.  The light was fading in the tall pines of the valleys, and there was a deep silence everywhere, undisturbed by so much as a whisper of the Chinook winds.  Mrs. Woods’s thoughts seemed far away—­doubtless among the old meadows, orchards, and farm-fields of New England.  Gretchen was playing the musical glasses.

Suddenly Mrs. Woods’s thoughts came back from their far-away journeys.  She had seen something that disturbed her.  She sat peering into a tract of trees which were some three hundred feet high—­one of the great tree cathedrals of the Northwestern forests.  Suddenly she said: 

“Gretchen, there are Injuns in the pines.  Watch!”

Gretchen looked out, but saw nothing.