“I shall believe whatever you tell me, Chief,” I answered.  “I am only too ready to believe.  You know I come of a superstitious race, and all my association with the Palefaces has never yet robbed me of my birthright to believe strange traditions.”

“You always understand,” he said after a pause.

“It’s my heart that understands,” I remarked quietly.

He glanced up quickly, and with one of his all too few radiant smiles, he laughed.

“Yes, skookum tum-tum.”  Then without further hesitation he told the tradition, which, although not of ancient happening, is held in great reverence by his tribe.  During its recital he sat with folded arms, leaning on the table, his head and shoulders bending eagerly towards me as I sat at the opposite side.  It was the only time he ever talked to me when he did not use emphasising gesticulations, but his hands never once lifted:  his wonderful eyes alone gave expression to what he called “The Legend of the ‘Salt-chuck Oluk’” (sea-serpent).

“Yes, it was during the first gold craze, and many of our young men went as guides to the whites far up the Fraser.  When they returned they brought these tales of greed and murder back with them, and our old people and our women shook their heads and said evil would come of it.  But all our young men, except one, returned as they went—­kind to the poor, kind to those who were foodless, sharing whatever they had with their tillicums.  But one, by name Shak-shak (The Hawk), came back with hoards of gold nuggets, chickimin (money), everything; he was rich like the white men, and, like them, he kept it.  He would count his chickimin, count his nuggets, gloat over them, toss them in his palms.  He rested his head on them as he slept, he packed them about with him through the day.  He loved them better than food, better than his tillicums, better than his life.  The entire tribe arose.  They said Shak-shak had the disease of greed; that to cure it he must give a great potlatch, divide his riches with the poorer ones, share them with the old, the sick, the foodless.  But he jeered and laughed and told them No, and went on loving and gloating over his gold.

“Then the Sagalie Tyee spoke out of the sky and said, ’Shak-shak, you have made of yourself a loathsome thing; you will not listen to the cry of the hungry, to the call of the old and sick; you will not share your possessions; you have made of yourself an outcast from your tribe and disobeyed the ancient laws of your people.  Now I will make of you a thing loathed and hated by all men, both white and red.  You will have two heads, for your greed has two mouths to bite.  One bites the poor, and one bites your own evil heart; and the fangs in these mouths are poison—­poison that kills the hungry, and poison that kills your own manhood.  Your evil heart will beat in the very centre of your foul body, and he that pierces it will kill the disease of greed forever from amongst