torrent
to gush oceanward. It was the crack of doom for the fiends. A few
essayed the leap. They fell far short of the stern edge, where the
Devil had sunk panting. They alighted on the water, but whirlpools
tripped them up, tossed them, bowled them along among floating
boulders, until the buffeted wretches were borne to the broader
calms below, where they sunk. Meanwhile, those who had not dared
the final leap attempted a backward one, but wanting the impetus of
pursuit, and shuddering at the fate of their comrades, every one of
them failed and fell short; and they too were swept away, horribly
sprawling in the flood.

As to the fiends who had stopped at the first crevice, they ran in
a body down the river to look for the mangled remains of their
brethren, and, the undermined bank giving way under their weight,
every fiend of them was carried away and drowned.

So perished the whole race of fiends.

As to the Devil, he had learnt a still deeper lesson. His tail
also, the ensign of deviltry, was irremediably dislocated by his
life-saving blow. In fact, it had ceased to be any longer a needful
weapon! Its antagonists were all gone; never a tail remained to be
brandished at it, in deadly encounter.

So, after due repose, the Devil sprang lightly across the chasms he
had so successfully engineered, and went home to rear his family
thoughtfully. Every year he brought his children down to the
Dalles, and told them the terrible history of his escape. The fires
of the Cascades burned away; the inland sea was drained, and its
bed became a fair prairie, and still the waters gushed along the
narrow crevice he had opened. He had, in fact, been the instrument
in changing a vast region from a barren sea into habitable land.

One great trial, however, remained with him, and made his life one
of grave responsibility. All his children born before the
catastrophe were cannibal, stiff-tailed fiends. After that great
event, every newborn imp of his was like himself in character and
person, and wore but a flaccid tail, the last insignium of
ignobility. Quarrels between these two factions embittered his days
and impeded civilization. Still it did advance, and long before his
death he saw the tails disappear forever.

Such is the Legend of The Dalles,--a leg