d he made the trees, the animals, and especially the
glaciers, live before us. Somehow a glacier never seemed cold when John
Muir was talking about it.

On September nineteenth a little stranger whose expected advent was
keeping me at home arrived in the person of our first-born daughter. For
two or three weeks preceding and following this event Muir was busy
writing his summer notes and finishing his pencil sketches, and also
studying the flora of the islands. It was a season of constant rains
when the _saanah_, the southeast rain-wind, blew a gale. But these
stormy days and nights, which kept ordinary people indoors, always
lured him out into the woods or up the mountains.

One wild night, dark as Erebus, the rain dashing in sheets and the wind
blowing a hurricane, Muir came from his room into ours about ten o'clock
with his long, gray overcoat and his Scotch cap on.

"Where now?" I asked.

"Oh, to the top of the mountain," he replied. "It is a rare chance to
study this fine storm."

My expostulations were in vain. He rejected with scorn the proffered
lantern: "It would spoil the effect." I retired at my usual time, for I
had long since learned not to worry about Muir. At two o'clock in the
morning there came a hammering at the front door. I opened it and there
stood a group of our Indians, rain-soaked and trembling--Chief
Tow-a-att, Moses, Aaron, Matthew, Thomas.

"Why, men," I cried, "what's wrong? What brings you here?"

"We want you play (pray)," answered Matthew.

I brought them into the house, and, putting on my clothes and lighting
the lamp, I set about to find out the trouble. It was not easy. They
were greatly excited and frightened.

"We scare. All Stickeen scare; plenty cly. We want you play God; plenty
play."

By dint of much questioning I gathered at last that the whole tribe were
frightened by a mysterious light waving and flickering from the top of
the little mountain that overlooked Wrangell; and they wished me to pray
to the white man's God and avert dire calamity.

"Some miner has camped there," I ventured.

An eager chorus protested; it was not like the light of a camp-fire in
the least; it waved in the air like the wings of a spirit. Besides,
there was no gold on the top of a hill like that; and no human being
would be so foolish as to camp up there on such a night, when there were
plenty of comfortable houses at the foot of the hill. It was a spirit, a
malignant spirit.

Suddenly