e folks are around. But
he'll make trouble yet. An Injun is a Injun. I hate Injuns, though Parson
Lee says I am all wrong. When you have seen as many of 'em as I have,
you'll know more than you do now."

Benjamin did not comprehend the words, but he felt that the woman had said
something injurious to him. The suspicion cut him to the quick. His black
eye sparkled and his cheek burned. The scholars all seemed to be sorry at
the impression that Mrs. Woods's muttered words had left in his mind. He
had struggled for two days to do his best--to follow his best self.

School closed. Benjamin rose like a statue. He stood silent for a time and
looked at the slanting sun and the dreamy afternoon glories of the
glaciers, then moved silently out of the door. The old chief met him in
the opening, and saw the hurt and troubled look in his face.

"What have you been doing to my boy?" he said to the master. "Has he not
been good?"

"Very good; I like him," said Mr. Mann. "He is trying to be good here,"
pointing to his heart. "The good in him will grow. I will help him."

The old chief and the boy walked away slowly out of the shadows of the
great trees and up the cool trail. The tall master followed them with his
eye. In the departing forms he saw a picture of the disappearing race. He
knew history well, and how it would repeat itself on the great plateau and
amid the giant forests of the Oregon. He felt that the old man was
probably one of the last great chiefs of the Umatillas.

On one of the peninsulas of the Oregon, the so-called Islands of the Dead,
the old warriors of the tribes were being gathered by the plagues that had
come to the territories and tribal regions ever since the Hudson Bay
Company established its posts on the west of the mountains, and Astoria
had been planted on the great river, and settlers had gathered in the
mountain-domed valley of the Willamette. Wherever the white sail went in
the glorious rivers, pestilence came to the native tribes. The Indian
race was perceptibly vanishing. Only one son of seven was left to
Umatilla. What would be the fate of this boy?

The master went home troubled over the event of the afternoon. He was
asking the Indian to be better than his opponent, and she was a
well-meaning woman and nominally a Christian.

His first thought was to go to Mrs. Woods and ask her to wholly change her
spirit and manners, and, in fact, preach to her the same simple doctrine
of following only