The ground was soft, and his body lay for a time half imbedded in it.

He was senseless, and blood streamed from his nose and reddened his eyes.  The old chief seized his arm and tried to raise him, but the effort brought no sign of life, and his body was lowered slowly back again by the agonized father, who sat down and dropped his head on his son’s breast.

Mr. Mann brought water and wet the boy’s lips and bathed his brow.  He then placed his hand over the boy’s heart and held it there.  There was a long silence.  The old chief watched the teacher’s hand.  He seemed waiting for a word of hope; but Mr. Mann did not speak.

The old chief lifted his head at last, and said; appealingly: 

“Boston tilicum, you do not know how I feel!  You do not know—­the birds know—­you do not know!”

The teacher rubbed the boy’s breast and arms, and said: 

“He will revive.”

“What, Boston tilicum?”

“He will live.”

“My boy?”

“Yes.”

The dark face brightened.  The old man clasped the boy’s hand and drew it to his breast.  The children attempted to brush the earth out of the young hero’s dark, matted hair, but the old chief said, mysteriously: 

“No touch him! he is mine.”

At last a convulsive movement passed over the boy’s body.  The teacher again pressed his hand on the heart of his pupil, and he quickly exclaimed:  “It beats.”

The fiery sun gleamed from the snowy mountains.  There were cool murmurs of winds in the trees, and they sent forth a resinous odor into the air.  The balm dropped down like a messenger of healing.

Presently the boy’s eyes opened and gazed steadily into the blue air.

The eagles were wheeling about the trees.  The boy watched them, as though nothing had passed.  They were making narrowing circles, and at last each alighted on the new nest beside their young.

He turned his face slowly toward his father.

“Saved!” he said.  “They are happy.  I fell.  Let’s go.”

He rose up.  As he did so the male eagle rose from his nest and, uttering a glad scream, wheeled in the sky and made his way through the crimson haze toward the fishing grounds of the lower Columbia.

The chief’s eye followed him for a time; then the old man turned a happy face on the schoolmaster and children and said: 

“I know how he feels—­the Manitou overhead—­he made the hearts of all; yours—­the birds—­mine.  He is glad!”

There was something beautiful and pathetic in the old chief’s sense of the common heart and feeling of all conscious beings.  The very eagles seemed to understand it; and Master Mann, as he turned away from the school-house that day, said to Gretchen: 

“I myself am being taught.  I am glad to learn all this large life.  I hope that you will one day become a teacher.”

Gretchen went home that afternoon with a glad heart.  Benjamin did not return to the school again for several days, and when he came back it seemed to be with a sense of humiliation.  He seemed to feel somehow that he ought not to have fallen from the tree.