"As he heard the last beat of the Thunder Bird's wings dying slowly, slowly, faintly, faintly, among the crags, he knew that the bird, too, was dying, for its soul was leaving its monster black body, and presently that soul appeared in the sky. He could see it arching overhead, before it took its long journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds, for the soul of the Thunder Bird was a radiant half-circle of glorious color spanning from peak to peak. He lifted his head then, for he knew it was the sign the ancient Medicine Man had told him to wait for--the sign that his long banishment was ended. "And all these years, down in the tidewater country, the little brown-faced twins were asking childwise, 'Where is our father? Why have we no father, like other boys?' To be met only with the oft-repeated reply, 'Your father is no more. Your father, the great chief, is dead.' "But some strange filial intuition told the boys that their sire would some day return. Often they voiced this feeling to their mother, but she would only weep and say that not even the witchcraft of the great Medicine Man could bring him to them. But when they were ten years old the two children came to their mother, hand within hand. They were armed with their little hunting-knives, their salmon spears, their tiny bows and arrows. "'We go to find our father,' they said. "'Oh! useless quest,' wailed the mother. "'Oh! useless quest,' echoed the tribes-people. "But the great Medicine Man said, 'The heart of a child has invisible eyes, perhaps the child-eyes see him. The heart of a child has invisible ears, perhaps the child-ears hear him call. Let them go.' So the little children went forth into the forest; their young feet flew as though shod with wings, their young hearts pointed to the north as does the white man's compass. Day after day they journeyed up-stream, until rounding a sudden bend they beheld a bark lodge with a thin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof. "'It is our father's lodge,' they told each other, for their childish hearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship. Hand-in-hand they approached, and entering the lodge, said the one word, 'Come.' "The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then towards the laughing river, then towards the mountains. "'Welcome, my sons!' he said. 'And good-bye, my mountains, my brothers, my crags and my canyons!' And with a child clinging to each hand he faced once more the country of the tidewater." * * * * * The legend was ended. For a long time he sat in silence. He had removed his gaze from the bend in the river, around which the two children had come and where the eyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of solitude. The chief spoke again, "It was here, on this spot we are sitting, that he built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone, alone."