d scanning every face.
"Riding out with an Injun, Gretchen, are you? That's what you are doing.
Girl, get off that horse and come with me! That is the kind of propriety
that they teach out in these parts, is it? and the master came from
Harvard College, too! One would think that this world was just made to
enjoy one's self in, just like a sheep pasture, where the lambs go hopping
and skipping, not knowing that they were born to be fleeced."

She hurried Gretchen away excitedly, and the school turned back. Benjamin
was disappointed, and looked more hurt than ever before. On the way he met
his old father, who had come out to look for him, and the rest of the
scholars dispersed to their homes.

That evening, after a long, vivid twilight, such as throws its splendor
over the mountain ranges in these northern latitudes, Mrs. Woods and
Gretchen were sitting in their log-house just within the open door. Mr.
Woods was at the block-house at Walla Walla, and the cabin was
unprotected. The light was fading in the tall pines of the valleys, and
there was a deep silence everywhere, undisturbed by so much as a whisper
of the Chinook winds. Mrs. Woods's thoughts seemed far away--doubtless
among the old meadows, orchards, and farm-fields of New England. Gretchen
was playing the musical glasses.

Suddenly Mrs. Woods's thoughts came back from their far-away journeys. She
had seen something that disturbed her. She sat peering into a tract of
trees which were some three hundred feet high--one of the great tree
cathedrals of the Northwestern forests. Suddenly she said:

"Gretchen, there are Injuns in the pines. Watch!"

Gretchen looked out, but saw nothing.

The shadows deepened.

"I have twice seen Injuns passing from tree to tree and hiding. Why are
they there? There--look!"

A sinewy form in the shadows of the pines appeared and disappeared.
Gretchen saw it.

"They mean evil, or they would not hide. Gretchen, what shall we do?"

Mrs. Woods closed the door and barred it, took down the rifle from the
side of the room, and looked out through a crevice in the split shutter.

There was a silence for a time; then Mrs. Woods moved and said: "They are
coming toward the house, passing from one tree to another. They mean
revenge--I feel it--revenge on me, and Benjamin--he is the leader of it."

The flitting of shadowy forms among the pines grew alarming. Nearer and
nearer they came, and more and more excited became Mrs. Woods's
appre