at her spirit felt that unuttered cry, and that it
brought her back? Be this as it may, while he was recovering from his
deadly swoon he dimly felt her presence beside him, and the soft cool
touch of her fingers on his brow. Then--or did he imagine it?--her
lips, cold as those of the dead, touched his own. But when
consciousness entirely returned, he was alone in the forest.

Blind, dizzy, staggering with weakness, he found his way to the camp.
Suddenly, as he drew near it he felt the earth sway and move beneath
him like a living thing. He caught hold of a tree to escape being
thrown to the ground. There came an awful burst of flame from Mount
Hood. Burning cinders and scoria lit up the eastern horizon like a
fountain of fire. Then down from the great canyon of the Columbia,
from the heart of the Cascade Range, broke a mighty thundering sound,
as if half a mountain had fallen. Drowning for a moment the roar of
the volcano, the deep echo rolled from crag to crag, from hill to
hill. A wild chorus of outcries rang from the startled camp,--the
fierce, wild cry of many tribes mad with fear yet breathing forth
tremulous defiance, the cry of human dread mingling with the last
echoes of that mysterious crash.

CHAPTER IX.

QUESTIONING THE DEAD.

Then he said: "Cold lips and breast without breath,
Is there no voice, no language of death?"

EDWIN ARNOLD.

While Cecil was on his way that evening to seek Wallulah, a canoe with
but a single occupant was dropping down the Columbia toward one of the
many _mimaluse_, or death-islands, that are washed by its waters.

An Indian is always stealthy, but there was an almost more than Indian
stealthiness about this canoe-man's movements. Noiselessly, as the
twilight deepened into darkness, the canoe glided out of a secluded
cove not far from the camp; noiselessly the paddle dipped into the
water, and the canoe passed like a shadow into the night.

On the rocky _mimaluse_ island, some distance below the mouth of the
Willamette, the Indian landed and drew his boat up on the beach. He
looked around for a moment, glanced at the red glow that lit the
far-off crest of Mount Hood, then turned and went up the pathway to
the ancient burial hut.

Who was it that had dared to visit the island of the dead after dark?
The bravest warriors were not capable of such temerity. Old men told
how, away back in the past, some bra