'My old man has gone, gone, gone,-- My old man to Tacoma has gone. To hunt the elk, he went long ago. When will he come down, down, down, Down to the salmon-pot and me?' 'He has come from Tacoma down, down, down,-- Down to the salmon-pot and thee,' shouted the reformed miser, rushing forward to supper with his faithful wife." "And how did Penelope explain the mystery?" I asked. "If you mean the old lady," replied Hamitchou, "she was my grandmother, and I'd thank you not to call names. She told my grandfather that he had been gone many years;--she could not tell how many, having dropped her tally-stick in the fire by accident that very day. She also told him how, in despite of the entreaties of many a chief who knew her economic virtues, and prayed her to become the mistress of his household, she had remained constant to the Absent, and forever kept the hopeful salmon-pot boiling for his return. She had distracted her mind from the bitterness of sorrow by trading in kamas and magic herbs, and had thus acquired a genteel competence. The excellent dame then exhibited with great complacency her gains, most of which she had put in the portable and secure form of personal ornament, making herself a resplendent magazine of valuable frippery. "Little cared the repentant sage for such things. But he was rejoiced to be again at home and at peace, and near his own early gains of hiaqua and treasure, buried in a place of security. These, however, he no longer overesteemed and hoarded. He imparted whatever he possessed, material treasures or stores of wisdom and experience, freely to all the land. Every dweller by Whulge came to him for advice how to chase the elk, how to troll or spear the salmon, and how to propitiate Tamanous. He became the Great Medicine Man of the Siwashes, a benefactor to his tribe and his race. "Within a year after he came down from his long nap on the side of Tacoma, a child, my father, was born to him. The sage lived many years, beloved and revered, and on his death-bed, long before the Boston tilicum or any blanketeers were seen in the regions of Whulge, he told this history to my father, as a lesson and a warning. My father, dying, told it to me. But I, alas! have no son; I grow old, and lest this wisdom perish from the earth, and Tamanous be again obliged to interpose against avarice, I tell the tale to thee, O Boston tyee. Mayest thou and thy nation not disdain this lesson of an earlier age, but profit by it and be wise." So far Hamitchou recounted his legend without the palisades of Fort Nisqually, and motioned, in expressive pantomime, at the close, that he was dry with big talk, and would gladly wet his whistle. [Illustration] CHAPTER XII A Summer in the Sierras