right to love
at all? God had sent him to do a work among the Indians; was it not
wicked for him to so much as look either to the right or to the left
till that work was done?

Amid this maze of perplexities, his tense, agonized soul sought in
vain for some solution, some conclusion. At times he sat in his lodge
and brooded over these things till he seemed wrought up almost to
madness, till his form trembled with excitement, and the old pain at
his heart grew sharp and deadly.

Then again, trying to shake it off, he went out among the few Indians
who were left in the camp and attempted to do missionary work; but
enthusiasm was lacking, the glow and tenderness was gone from his
words, the grand devotion that had inspired him so long failed him at
last. He was no longer a saintly apostle to the Indians; he was only a
human lover, torn by stormy human doubts and fears.

Even the Indians felt that some intangible change had come over him,
and as they listened their hearts no longer responded to his
eloquence; they felt somehow that the life was gone from his words. He
saw it too, and it gave him a keen pang.

He realized that the energy and concentration of his character was
gone, that a girl's beauty had drawn him aside from the mission on
which God had sent him.

"I will go and see her. I will, without letting her know that I love
her, give her to understand my position and her own. She shall see how
impossible it is for us ever to be aught to each other. And I shall
urge her to cling to God and walk in the path he has appointed for
her, while I go on in mine."

So thinking, he left his lodge that evening and took the path to
Wallulah's home.

Some distance from the encampment he met an Indian funeral procession.
The young Willamette runner had died that morning, and now they were
bearing him to the river, down which a canoe was to waft the body and
the mourners to the nearest _mimaluse_ island. The corpse was swathed
in skins and tied around with thongs; the father bore it on his
shoulder, for the dead had been but a slender lad. Behind them came
the mother and a few Indian women. As they passed, the father chanted
a rude lament.

"Oh, Mox-mox, my son, why did you go away and leave our wigwam empty?
You were not weak nor sickly, and your life was young. Why did you go?
Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!"

Then the women took up the doleful refrain,--

"Oh, Mox-mox, dead, dead, dead!"

Then the old man again,