ch other. It is sweet to be told that we are better and wiser
than all around us. It is sweet to the red man; the pale-faces may have
more sober minds--"

The Seneca paused an instant, and Fuller fancied that a smile of irony
again struggled about his compressed lip. As the traveler made no
remark, however, the youthful warrior resumed his tale.

"I hear a great deal of what demagogues are doing among your people,
and of the evil they produce. They begin by flattering, and end by
ruling. He carries a strong hand, who makes all near him help to uphold
it. In the crowd few perceive its weight until it crushes them.

"Thus was it with See-wise. Half the young men listened to him, and
followed in his trail. The aged chiefs took counsel together. They saw
that all the ancient traditions were despised, and that new conduct was
likely to come in with new opinions. They were too old to change. What
was done has never been said, but See-wise disappeared. It was
whispered that he had gone down among the fish he loved to take out of
season. There is one tradition, that he speared an enormous salmon, and
the fish, in its struggles, drew him out of his canoe, and that his
hands could not let go of the handle of his spear. Let this be as it
may, no one ever saw See-wise any more, in the form in which he had
been known to his people. At length the trunk of a tree was seen
floating about the Seneca, and one of the oldest of the chiefs,
pointing to it, pronounced the name of 'See-wise.' He would fish out of
season, and his spirit is condemned, they say, to float among the
salmon, and trout, and eels, for a thousand winters. It was not long
after this that the lake began to speak, in a voice loud as the thunder
from the clouds. The Seneca traditions say this is the Manitou calling
to See-wise, when he goes down after the fish, out of season."

"And do you, an educated man, believe in this tale?" asked Fuller.

"I can not say. The things learned in childhood remain the longest on
the memory. They make the deepest marks. I have seen the evil that a
demagogue can do among the pale-faces; why should I not believe the
same among my own people?"

"This is well enough, as respects the curse on the demagogue; but lakes
do not usually--"

Fuller had got thus far, when the Seneca, as if in mockery, emitted the
sound that has obtained the name of the "Lake Gun" among those who have
lived on its banks in these later times. Perhaps it was, in