he said to himself. "Then this evening I will go and
visit Wallulah."
The thought sent the blood coursing warmly through his veins, but he chided himself for it. "It is but duty, I go to her only as a missionary," he repeated to himself over and over again.
He went to the lodge of the young Willamette and asked for him.
"He is not here," the father of the youth told him. "He is in the sweat-house. He is sick this morning, hieu sick."
And the old man emphasized the hieu [much], with a prolonged intonation and a comprehensive gesture as if the young man were very sick indeed. To the sweat-house went Cecil forthwith. He found it to be a little arched hut, made by sticking the ends of bent willow-wands into the ground and covering them over with skins, leaving only a small opening for entrance. When a sick person wished to take one of those " sweat baths " so common among the Indians, stones were heated red hot and put within the hut, and water was poured on them. The invalid, stripped to the skin, entered, the opening was closed behind him, and he was left to steam in the vapors.
When Cecil came up, the steam was pouring between the overlapping edges of the skins, and he could hear the young Willamette inside, chanting a low monoto nous song, an endlessly repeated invocation to his totem to make him well. How he could sing or even breathe hi that stifling atmosphere was a mystery to Cecil.
By and by the Willamette raised the flap that hung over the entrance and crawled out, hot, steaming,
