“Gretchen, did you see all that?  Do you think that the spirit has eyes, and that they see true?  But how could I begin?  The Injuns all hate me.”

“Make them love you.”

“How?”

“Say nevertheless to them.”

“Well, Gretchen, you are a good girl, and I am sorry for the hard things that I have said.  I do not feel that I have shown just the right spirit toward Benjamin.  But he has said that he will not do me any harm, for the sake of his master, and I am willin’ to give up my will for my Master.  It is those that give up their desires that have their desires in this world, and anybody who does an injury to another makes for himself a judgment-day of some sort.  You may tell Benjamin that I am real sorry for bein’ hard to him, and that, if he will come over and see me, I’ll give him a carved pipe that husband made.  Now, Gretchen, you may go, and I’ll sit down and think a spell.  I’ll be dreadful lonely when you’re gone.”

Gretchen kissed her foster-mother at the door, and said: 

“Your new spirit, mother, will make us both so happy in the future!  We’ll work together.  What the master teaches me, I’ll teach you.”

“What—­books?”

“Yes.”

“O Gretchen, your heart is real good!  But see here—­my hair is gray.  Oh, I am sorry—­what a woman I might have been!”

Gretchen lay down in the lodge that night beside the dusky wife of the old chief.  The folds of the tent were open, and the cool winds came in from the Columbia, under the dim light of the moon and stars.

The tepee, or tent, was made of skins, and was adorned with picture-writing—­Indian poetry (if so it might be called).  Overhead were clusters of beautiful feathers and wings of birds.  The old chief loved to tell her stories of these strange and beautiful wings.  There were the wings of the condor, of the bald and the golden eagle, of the duck-hawk, pigeon-hawk, squirrel-hawk, of the sap-sucker, of the eider duck, and a Zenaider-like dove.  Higher up were long wings of swans and albatrosses, heads of horned owls, and beaks of the laughing goose.  Through the still air, from some dusky shallow of the river came the metallic calls of the river birds, like the trumpeting swan.  The girl lay waking, happy in recalling the spirit with which her foster-mother had accepted her plan of life.

Suddenly her sensitive spirit became aware of something unusual and strange at the opening of the tent.  There was a soft, light step without, a guarded footfall.  Then a tall, dark shadow distinctly appeared, with a glitter of mother-of-pearl ornaments and a waving of plumes.  It stood there like a ghost of a vivid fancy, for a time.  Gretchen’s heart beat.  It was not an unusual thing for an Indian to come to the tepee late in the evening; but there was something mysterious and ominous in the bearing and atmosphere of this shadowy visitor.  The form stepped within the opening of the tent, and a voice whispered, “Umatilla, awake!”