the elk came down, to find death awaiting him as he
stooped and drank. Or beside the same fountain the old man watched
at night, drowsily starting at every crackling branch, until, when
the moon was high, and her illumination declared the pearly water,
elk dashed forth incautious into the glade, and met their midnight
destiny.

"Elk-meat, too, he sold to his tribe. This brought him pelf, but,
alas, for his greed, the pelf came slowly. Waters and woods were
rich in game. All the Squallyamish were hunters and fishers,
though none so skilled as he. They were rarely absolutely in want,
and, when they came to him for supplies, they were far too poor in
hiaqua.

"So the old man thought deeply, and communed with his wisdom, and,
while he waited for fish or beast, he took advice within himself
from his demon--he talked with Tamanous. And always the question
was, 'How may I put hiaqua in my purse?'

"Tamanous never revealed to him that far to the north, beyond the
waters of Whulge, are tribes with their under lip pierced with a
fish-bone, among whom hiaqua is plenty as salmonberries are in the
woods that time in midsummer salmon fin it along the reaches of
Whulge.

"But the more Tamanous did not reveal to him these mysteries of
nature, the more he kept dreamily prying into his own mind,
endeavoring to devise some scheme by which he might discover a
treasure-trove of the beloved shell. His life seemed wasted in the
patient, frugal industry, which only brought slow, meager gains. He
wanted the splendid elation of vast wealth and the excitement of
sudden wealth. His own peculiar tamanous was the elk. Elk was also
his totem, the cognizance of his freemasonry with those of his own
family, and their family friends in other tribes. Elk, therefore,
were every way identified with his life; and he hunted them farther
and farther up through the forests on the flanks of Tacoma, hoping
that some day his tamanous would speak in the dying groan of one of
them, and gasp out the secret of the mines of hiaqua, his heart's
desire.

"Tacoma was so white and glittering, that it seemed to stare at him
very terribly and mockingly, and to know his shameful avarice, and
how it led him to take from starving women their cherished lip and
nose jewels of hiaqua, an