e."

"Why, that's awful," Elinor said, lightly, for she had no picture of him
engulfed in the slow-moving treachery below them.

"There's an old Indian legend about that pool," Vic said, staring down
at the water.

"Tell me about it." Elinor was breaking the twigs from a branch of
buck-berry growing beside her.

"Oh, it's a tragical one, like everything else about that place," Vic
responded, grimly. "Old Lagonda, Chief of the Wahoos, I reckon, I don't
know his tribe, did n't want to give up this valley to the sons and
heirs of Sunrise to desecrate with salmon cans and pop bottles and
Harvard-turned chaperons. He held out against putting his multiplication
sign to the treaty, claiming that land was like water and air and could
n't be bought and sold. But the white men with true missionary courtesy
held his head under water till he burbled 'Nuff,' and signed up with
a piece of charcoal. Then he went down the river to this smooth-faced
whirlpool, and laid a curse on the sons of men who had taken his own
from him."

The twilight had deepened. The sun was lost in the cloudbank out of
which a hot wind was sweeping eastward. Vic was telling the story well,
and the magnetism of his voice was compelling. Elinor drew nearer to
him.

"What was the curse? I would n't want to go near that place, unless you
were with me."

The very innocence of the words put a thrill in Vic Burleigh's every
pulse beat.

"Don't ever do it, if you can help it." Vic could not keep back the
words. "Old Lagonda decreed a tribute to the river for the wrong done to
him, a life a year in that pool. And the Walnut has been exacting in its
rights. Life after life has gone out down there until sometimes it seems
like the old chief's curse would never be lifted."

"I hope it may be, while I am at Sunrise, anyhow," Elinor said. "I don't
like real tragedies about me. I like an easy, comfortable life, and
everybody good and happy. I hope the curse will be staid until I go back
home."

Vic hadn't thought of this. Of course, she would leave Sunrise
some time. Her home was in Cambridge-by-the-Sea, not on the
Prairie-by-the-Walnut. She belonged to the dead-language scholars, not
to crude red-blooded creatures like himself. He turned his face to the
west and the threatening sky seemed in harmony with his storm-riven
soul. He was so young--less than half an hour older than the big
whole-hearted fellow who started up the bluff in picnic frolic with a
pretty