breathed, and there was
breath in him to curse me once and well before he died.

"And so it went, now one old man, and now another. Sometimes the word
reached us long after of how they died, and sometimes it did not reach
us. And the old men of the other tribes were weak and afraid, and would
not join with us. As I say, one by one, till I alone was left. I am
Imber, of the Whitefish people. My father was Otsbaok, a strong man.
There are no Whitefish now. Of the old men I am the last. The young men
and young women are gone away, some to live with the Pellys, some with
the Salmons, and more with the white men. I am very old, and very tired,
and it being vain fighting the Law, as thou sayest, Howkan, I am come
seeking the Law."

"O Imber, thou art indeed a fool," said Howkan.

But Imber was dreaming. The square-browed judge likewise dreamed, and
all his race rose up before him in a mighty phantasmagoria--his
steel-shod, mail-clad race, the law-giver and world-maker among the
families of men. He saw it dawn red-flickering across the dark forests
and sullen seas; he saw it blaze, bloody and red, to full and triumphant
noon; and down the shaded slope he saw the blood-red sands dropping into
night. And through it all he observed the Law, pitiless and potent, ever
unswerving and ever ordaining, greater than the motes of men who
fulfilled it or were crushed by it, even as it was greater than he, his
heart speaking for softness.

DOWN THE FLUME WITH THE SNEATH PIANO

BY

BAILEY MILLARD

Reprinted from _The Century Magazine_ by permission

I HAD halted at Camp Five to catch my breath. This flying down a Sierran
lumber-flume, scurrying through the heady air like another Phaeton, was
too full of thrills to be taken all in one gasp. I dropped limply into
the rawhide-bottomed chair under the awning in front of the big board
shanty which was on stilts beside the airy flume, and gazed on down the
long, gleaming, tragic, watery way to the next steep slide. Then I
looked at the frail little flume-boat which had borne Oram Sheets and me
thus far on our hazardous journey to the valley. Perhaps I shivered a
bit at the prospect of more of this hair-raising adventure. At any rate,
Oram, the intrepid flume-herder, laughed, dug his picaroon into a log,
and asked:

"Sorry yeh come? Wal, it does git onto a man's nerve the first trip.
Strange so many brash ones like you wanter try, but few on 'em ever dast
git in ag'in. But I've