nking.

"Tell me," he said, while it seemed to Cecil as if that eagle glance
read every secret of his innermost heart, "tell me where your land is,
and why you left it, and the reason for your coming among us. Keep no
thought covered, for Multnomah will see it if you do."

Cecil's eye kindled, his cheek flushed. Wallulah was forgotten; his
mission, and his mission only, was remembered. He stood before one who
held over the many tribes of the Wauna the authority of a prince: if
_he_ could but be won for Christ, what vast results might follow!

He told it all,--the story of his home and his work, his call of God
to go to the Indians, his long wanderings, the message he had to
deliver, how it had been received by some and rejected by many; now
he was here, a messenger sent by the Great Spirit to tell the tribes
of the Wauna the true way of life. He told it all, and never had he
been so eloquent. It was a striking contrast, the grim Indian sitting
there leaning on his bow, his sharp, treacherous gaze bent like a bird
of prey on the delicately moulded man pleading before him.

He listened till Cecil began to talk of love and forgiveness as duties
enjoined by the Great Spirit. Then he spoke abruptly.

"When you stood up in the council the day the bad chief was tried, and
told of the weakness and the wars that would come if the confederacy
was broken up, you talked wisely and like a great chief and warrior;
now you talk like a woman. Love! forgiveness!" He repeated the words,
looking at Cecil with a kind of wondering scorn, as if he could not
comprehend such weakness in one who looked like a brave man. "War and
hate are the life of the Indian. They are the strength of his heart.
Take them away, and you drain the blood from his veins; you break his
spirit; he becomes a squaw."

"But my people love and forgive, yet they are not squaws. They are
brave and hardy in battle; their towns are great; their country is
like a garden."

And he told Multnomah of the laws, the towns, the schools, the settled
habits and industry of New England. The chief listened with growing
impatience. At length he threw his arm up with an indescribable
gesture of freedom, like a man rejecting a fetter.

"How can they breathe, shut in, bound down like that? How can they
live, so tied and burdened?"

"Is not that better than tribe forever warring against tribe? Is it
not better to live like men than to lurk in dens and feed on roots
like beasts?