Page:Bridge of the Gods (Balch).djvu/199

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Wallulah.

CHAPTER V.

A DEAD QUEEN'S JEWELS.

For round about the walls yclothed were With goodly arras of great maiesty, Woven with golde and silke so close and nere That the rich metall lurked privily.

The Faerie Queene.

T T E found the sentinels by the pathway half reluo

  • *- tant to let him pass, but they did not forbid

him. Evidently it was only their awe of him as the "Great White Prophet," to whom Multnomah had added the dignity of an Indian sachem, that over came their scruples. It was with a sense of doing wrong that he went on. "If Multnomah knew," he thought, "what would he do?" And brave as Cecil was, he shuddered, thinking how deadly the wrath of the war-chief would be, if he knew of these secret visits to his daughter.

"It is an abuse of hospitality; it is clandestine, wrong," he thought bitterly. "And yet she is lonely, she needs me, and I must go to her; but I will never go again."

Where he had met her before, he found her waiting for him now, a small, graceful figure, standing in the shadow of the wood. She heard his footsteps before he saw her, and the melancholy features were trans figured with joy. She stood hesitating a moment like