“’It is the olden law of the Squamish that, lest evil befall the tribe, the sire of twin children must go afar and alone, into the mountain fastnesses, there by his isolation and his loneliness to prove himself stronger than the threatened evil, and thus to beat back the shadow that would otherwise follow him and all his people.  I, therefore, name for him the length of days that he must spend alone fighting his invisible enemy.  He will know by some great sign in Nature the hour that the evil is conquered, the hour that his race is saved.  He must leave before this sun sets, taking with him only his strongest bow, his fleetest arrows, and, going up into the mountain wilderness, remain there ten days—­alone, alone.’

“The masterful voice ceased, the tribe wailed their assent, the father arose speechless, his drawn face revealing great agony over this seemingly brief banishment.  He took leave of his sobbing wife, of the two tiny souls that were his sons, grasped his favorite bow and arrows, and faced the forest like a warrior.  But at the end of the ten days he did not return, nor yet ten weeks, nor yet ten months.

“‘He is dead,’ wept the mother into the baby ears of her two boys.  ’He could not battle against the evil that threatened; it was stronger than he—­he, so strong, so proud, so brave.’

“‘He is dead,’ echoed the tribesmen and the tribeswomen.  ’Our strong, brave chief, he is dead.’  So they mourned the long year through, but their chants and their tears but renewed their grief; he did not return to them.

“Meanwhile, far up the Capilano the banished chief had built his solitary home; for who can tell what fatal trick of sound, what current of air, what faltering note in the voice of the medicine-man had deceived his alert Indian ears?  But some unhappy fate had led him to understand that his solitude must be of ten years’ duration, not ten days, and he had accepted the mandate with the heroism of a stoic.  For if he had refused to do so his belief was that, although the threatened disaster would be spared him, the evil would fall upon his tribe.  Thus was one more added to the long list of self-forgetting souls whose creed has been, ’It is fitting that one should suffer for the people.’  It was the world-old heroism of vicarious sacrifice.

“With his hunting-knife the banished Squamish chief stripped the bark from the firs and cedars, building for himself a lodge beside the Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared by arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles.  All through the salmon-run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a housewife.  The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and cinnamon bears, fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed deer never returned to their haunts from their evening drinking at the edge of the stream—­their wild hearts, their agile bodies were stilled when he took aim.  Smoked hams and saddles hung in