"'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 than the voice of Tamanous,--silence under the shadow of the great cliff,--silence deepening down the forest vistas,--silence filling the void up to the snows of Tacoma. All life and motion seemed paralyzed. At last Skai-ki, the Blue-Jay, the wise bird, foe to magic, sang cheerily overhead. Her song seemed to refresh again the honest laws of nature. The buzz of life stirred everywhere again, and the inspired miser rose and hastened home to prepare for his work. "When Tamanous has put a great thought in a man's brain, has whispered him a great discovery within his power, or hinted at a great crime, that spiteful demon does not likewise suggest the means of accomplishment.