to be a brother. I have no shed blood--I live in
peace--like yonder river. The stars love to shine on the peaceful river.
Benjamin will learn. I go away when the swallows go, and no more come when
the swallows bring the spring on their wings again. Teach Benjamin to be
his good self all the time; make him good _here_."

All the Indian visitors who came to the place examined the violin
cautiously, and the Indian hunters seemed to regard Gretchen with
suspicion. When any asked her to play for them, the old chief would
answer: "Not now, but at the Potlatch--then it speak and you will hear;
you will hear what it says."

But, of all the people that came to the lodge, no one could have been more
curious than Mrs. Woods. She had been living in terror of the threatened
events of the October feast, and yet she wished to make the Indians
believe that she was indifferent to their ill-will, and that she possessed
some hidden power that gave her security.

She approached the lodge slowly on the occasion of her visit, picking red
whortleberries by the way. Benjamin watched her nervous motions, and felt
that they implied a want of respect, and he grew silent and looked
stoical. Gretchen went out to meet her, and brought her to the old chief.

[Illustration: _Afar loomed Mount Hood._]

It was a beautiful day, one of those long dreams of golden splendor that
glorify the banks of the Oregon. Eccentric Victor Trevette and his Indian
wife were at the lodge, and the company were joined by the Rev. Jason Lee,
who had come up the Columbia in the interests of the mission in the
Willamette Valley. Seattle[B] was there, from the Willamette, then
young, and not yet the titular chief of Governor Stevens.[C] It was a
company of diverse spirits--Trevette, the reputed gambler, but the true
friend of the Indian races; Lee, who had beheld Oregon in his early
visions, and now saw the future of the mountain-domed country in dreams;
sharp-tongued but industrious and warm-hearted Mrs. Woods; the musical
German girl, with memories of the Rhine; and the Indian chief and his
family. The Columbia rolled below the tall palisades, the opposite bank
was full of cool shadows of overhanging rocks, sunless retreats, and
dripping cascades of glacier-water. Afar loomed Mount Hood in grandeur
unsurpassed, if we except Tacoma, inswathed in forests and covered with
crystal crowns. The Chinook winds were blowing coolly, coming from the
Kuro Siwo, or placid ocean-river