nd let Wai-
lulah give you food, and spread a mat for you to rest upon."
"No, I am hungry only to see Wallulah and hear her talk. Sit down on the log again." She seated herself, and her father stood beside her with an ab stracted gaze, his hand stroking her long, soft tresses. He was thinking of the darker, richer tresses of another, whose proud, sad face and mournful eyes with their wistful meaning, so like Wallulah s own, he, a barbarian prince, could never understand.
Although, according to the superstitious custom of the Willamettes, he never spoke the name of Sea- Flower x or alluded to her in any way, he loved his lost wife with a deep and unchanging affection. She had been a fair frail thing whose grace and refine ment perplexed and fascinated him, moving him to unwonted tenderness and yearning. He had brought to her the spoils of the chase and of battle. The finest mat was braided for her lodge, the choicest skins and furs spread for her bed, and the chieftain- ess s string of hiagua shells and grizzly bear s claws had been put around her white neck by Multnomah s own hand. In spite of all this, she drooped and saddened year by year; the very hands that sought to cherish her seemed but to bruise; and she sick ened and died, the delicate woman, in the arms of the iron war-chief, like a flower in the grasp of a mailed hand.
Why did she die? Why did she always seem so sad? Why did she so often steal away to weep over her child? Was not the best food hers, and the warm place by the lodge fire, and the softest bear skin to rest on; and was she not the wife of
