heard Multnomah speaking to him in cold, hard
tones.
"The white man has heard the words of the runner. What has he to say why his life should not pay the blood-debt?"
Cecil rose to his feet. With one last effort he put Wallulah, himself, his mission, into the hands of God; with one last effort he forced himself to speak.
Men of nervous temperament, like Cecil, can bring out of an exhausted body an energy, an outburst of final and intense effort, of which those of stronger physique do not seem capable. But it drains the remaining vital forces, and the reaction is terrible. Was it this flaming-up of the almost burned-out em bers of life that animated Cecil now? Or was it the Divine Strength coming to him in answer to prayer? Be this as it may, when he opened his lips to speak, all the power of his consecration came back; physical weakness and mental anxiety left him; he felt that Wallulah was safe in the arms of the Infinite Compas sion; he felt his love for the Indians, his deep yearn ing to help them, to bring them to God, rekindling within him; and never had he been more grandly the Apostle to the Indians than now.
In passionate tenderness, in burning appeal, in liv ing force and power of delivery, it was the supreme effort of his life. He did not plead for himself; he ig nored, put aside, forgot his own personal danger; but he set before his hearers the wickedness of their own system of retaliation and revenge; he showed them how it overshadowed their lives and lay like a dead ening weight on their better natures. The horror, the cruelty, the brute animalism of the blood- thi
