d to give them in return only tough scraps
of dried elk-meat and salmon. When men are shabby, mean, and
grasping, they feel reproached for their groveling lives by the
unearthliness of nature's beautiful objects, and they hate flowers
and sunsets, mountains and the quiet stars of heaven.

"Nevertheless," continued Hamitchou, "this wise old fool of my
legend went on stalking elk along the sides of Tacoma, ever
dreaming of wealth. And at last, as he was hunting near the snows
one day, one very clear and beautiful day of late summer, when
sunlight was magically disclosing far distances, and making all
nature supernaturally visible and proximate, Tamanous began to work
in the soul of the miser.

"'Are you brave?' whispered Tamanous in the strange, ringing, dull,
silent thunder-tones of a demon voice. 'Dare you go to the caves
where my treasures are hid?'

"'I dare,' said the miser.

"He did not know that his lips had syllabled a reply. He did not
even hear his own words. But all the place had become suddenly
vocal with echoes. The great rock against which he leaned crashed
forth, 'I dare.' Then all along through the forest, dashing from
tree to tree and lost at last among the murmuring of breeze-shaken
leaves, went careering his answer, taken up and repeated
scornfully, 'I dare.' And after a silence, while the daring one
trembled and would gladly have ventured to shout, for the
companionship of his own voice, there came across from the vast
snow wall of Tacoma a tone like the muffled threatening plunge of
an avalanche into a chasm, 'I dare.'

"'You dare!' said Tamanous, enveloping him with a dread sense of an
unseen, supernatural presence; 'you pray for wealth of hiaqua.
Listen!'

"This injunction was hardly needed; the miser was listening with
dull eyes kindled and starting. He was listening with every rusty
hair separating from its unkempt mattedness, and outstanding
upright, a caricature of an aureole.

"'Listen,' said Tamanous, in the noonday hush. And then Tamanous
vouchsafed at last the great secret of the hiaqua mines, while in
terror near to death the miser heard, and every word of guidance
toward the hidden treasure of the mountains seared itself into his
soul ineffaceably.

"Silence came again more terrible now t