after nightfall, and had paid the awful forfeit. They
were struck by unseen hands. Weapons that had lain
for years beside the decaying corpses of forgotten
warriors wounded them in the dark. Fleeing to their
canoes in swiftest fear, they found the shadowy pur
suit was swifter still, and were overtaken and struck
down, while the whole island rung with mocking
laughter. One only escaped, plunging all torn and
bruised into the river and swimming to the farther
shore. When he looked back, the island was covered
with moving lights, and the shrill echo of fiendish
mirth came to him across the water. His compan
ions were never seen again. A little while afterward
the dogs barked all night around his lodge, and in the
morning he was found lying dead upon his couch, his
face ghastly and drawn with fear, as if at some fright
ful apparition.
"He disturbed the mimaluse tillicums [dead peo ple], and they came for him," said the old medicine men, as they looked at him.
Since then, no one had been on the island except in the daytime. Little bands of mourners had brought hither the swathed bodies of their dead, laid them in the burial hut, lifted the wail over them, and left upon the first approach of evening.
Who, then, was this, the first for generations to set foot on the mimaluse illahee after dark?
It could be but one, the only one among all the tribes who would have dared to come, and to come alone, Multnomah, the war-chief, who knew not what it was to fear the living or the dead.
Startled by the outburst of the great smoking moun tains, which always presaged woe to the Willamettes,
