But after they parted, when her presence was withdrawn and he was alone, he felt like a man faithless and dishonored; like a prophet who had bartered the salvation of the people to whom he had been sent, in exchange for a woman’s kisses, which could bring him only disgrace and death.
As he went back to the camp in the stillness of midnight, he was startled by a distant roar, and saw through the tree-tops flames bursting from the far-off crater of Mount Hood. The volcano was beginning one of its periodical outbursts. But to Cecil’s mind, imbued with the gloomy supernaturalism of early New England, and unconsciously to himself, tinged in later years with the superstition of the Indians among whom he had lived so long, that ominous roar, those flames leaping up into the black skies of night, seemed a sign of the wrath of God.
CHAPTER VII.
ORATOR AGAINST ORATOR.
The gravity, fixed attention, and decorum of these sons of the forest was calculated to make for them a most favorable impression.—Gray: History of Oregon.
The next day all the Indians were gathered around the council grove. Multnomah presided, and every sachem was in his place.
There was to be a trial of eloquence,—a tourney of orators, to see which tribe had the best. Only one, the most eloquent of each tribe, was to speak; and Multnomah was to decide who was victor. The mother of Wallulah had introduced the custom, and it had become popular among the Indians.