A gleam shot across the haughty face of the old chief. “Listen!” he said in his own speech, his voice clear and vibrant with passion. “You come to my wigwam, wounded, dying. Our people take you in, bring you back from the land of the Great Spirit. For many moons you live with me, my son, her brother. When you grow strong again you become a wolf, you tear my heart; a thief, you rob my cache of the food on which I live, you take away my treasure, my pride, my honour, my name. On my knees”—he fell on his knees, his face distorted with passion—“I make a prayer to the Great Spirit that some day He will show me your face. That day will wipe out my shame in blood.” He rose from his knees. His face once more took on its accustomed look of haughty self-command. “Last night my daughter told me how your woman saved the child from death. Today you too gave your blood for him. I am content. My knife remains in its sheath. I have heard your word. It is not good. The boy is my daughter’s son, he is my son. He will be chief after me. He will be Indian. He will learn all that his mother has learned, and more. But he will be Indian. Tomorrow we go to our own land. Never again will we look upon your face, never again will you come to our land. The day you come to our land you will die.” “You will let me pay for the boy’s education and—and all that?” Gaspard pleaded in a shaking voice. “No! No thief shall pay money for the son of Wah-na-ta-hi-ta. Go! dog!” The tall spare form drawn up to its full height, the out-flung command, the dark eagle-like face, the fiercely blazing eye, the haughty mien, the ringing trumpet tone, all this, with an acute and damnatory consciousness of baseness and all too fully deserved rebuke, combined to produce upon Gaspard’s sensitive, artistic soul a truly appalling and overwhelming effect. His whole being shrivelled within him like a growing tree before the blast of a scorching flame. An abasing degradation swept his soul bare of any and every sense of manhood. For some moments he stood utterly deprived of speech or movement. An intolerable agony of humiliation paralysed his mental processes. His mind was blank. He sought for a word but no word seemed adequate. Nor could he move from the spot. Fascinated by that superb, terrible, living embodiment of vengeful judgment, he was held rooted to earth. That final utterance of blighting contempt, “Go! dog!” inhibited thought or motion. Suddenly there flamed up against the blank wall of his imagination, as if in a fiery scroll, the words of ancient doom, “Depart from me, ye cursed.” He was conscious at once of an agonising desire to be gone and of an utter powerlessness to lift his feet from their place.