ket
over them. I only use it because I started to when you were the only
baby I had, and it was your name, so I covered you with it at night."

"And I want to cover myself with it now," he explained, "its head as my
headdress, its front paws about my neck, its thick fur and tail trailing
behind me as I dance."

"So you are going to dance, my little Ta-la-pus?" she answered proudly.
"But how is that, when you do not yet know our great tribal dances?"

"I have made one of my own, and a song, too," he said, shyly.

She caught him to her, smoothing the hair back from his dark forehead.
"That is right," she half whispered, for she felt he did not want anyone
but herself to know his boyish secret. "Always make things for yourself,
don't depend on others, try what you can do alone. Yes, you may take the
skin of the prairie wolf. I will give it to you for all time--it is
yours."

That night his father also laid in his hands a gift. It was a soft,
pliable belt, woven of the white, peeled roots of the cedar, dyed
brilliantly, and worked into a magnificent design.

"Your great-grandmother made it," said the chief. "Wear it on your first
journey into the larger world than this island, and do nothing in all
your life that would make her regret, were she alive, to see it round
your waist."

So little Ta-la-pus set forth with his father and brother, well equipped
for the great Potlatch, and the meeting of many from half a score of
tribes.

They crossed the Straits on a white man's steamer, a wonderful sight to
Ta-la-pus, who had never been aboard any larger boat than his father's
fishing smack and their own high-bowed, gracefully-curved canoe. In and
out among the islands of the great gulf the steamer wound, bringing them
nearer, ever nearer to the mainland. Misty and shadowy, Vancouver Island
dropped astern, until at last they steamed into harbor, where a crowd of
happy-faced Squamish Indians greeted them, stowed them away in canoes,
paddled a bit up coast, then sighted the great, glancing fires that were
lighting up the grey of oncoming night--fires of celebration and welcome
to all the scores of guests who were to partake of the lavish
hospitality of the great Squamish chief.

As he stepped from the great canoe, Ta-la-pus thought he felt a strange
thrill pass through the soles of his feet. They had touched the mainland
of the vast continent of North America for the first time; his feet
seemed to become sensitive, soft, f