Gretchen's eye fell upon the musical glasses, which were among the few things that she had brought from the East and which had belonged to her old German home. She had tuned them early in the evening by pouring water into them, as she had been taught to do in her old German village, and she wet her fingers and touched them to the tender forest hymn:
"Now the woods are all sleeping."
"He has stopped," said Mrs. Woods. "He is listening—play."
The music filled the cabin. No tones can equal in sweetness the musical glasses, and the trembling nerves of Gretchen's fingers gave a spirit of pathetic pleading to the old German forest hymn. Over and over again she played the air, waiting for the word of Mrs. Woods to cease.
"He is going," said Mrs. Woods, slowly. "He is moving back toward the pines. He has changed his mind, or has gone for his band. You may stop now."
Mrs. Woods watched by the split shutter until past midnight. Then she laid down on the bed, and Gretchen watched, and one listened while the other slept, by turns, during the night. But no footstep was heard. The midsummer sun blazed over the pines in the early morning; birds sang gayly in the dewy air, and Gretchen prepared the morning meal as usual, then made her way to the log school-house.
She found Benjamin there. He met her with a happy face.
"Bad Indian come to your cabin last night," said he. "He mean evil; he hate old woman. She wah-wah too much, and he hate. Bad Indian hear music—violin; he be pleased—evil hawks fly out of him. Good Indian come back. One is tied to the other. One no let the other go. What was that low music I hear? Baby music! Chinook wind in the bushes! Quail—mother-bird singing to her nest! I love that music.
"Say, you play at Potlatch, frighten away the hawks; mother-birds sing. No devil dance. Say, I have been good; no harm old wah-wah. Will you—will you play—play that tin-tin at Potlatch under the big moon?"
A great thought had taken possession of the young Indian's mind, and a great plan—one worthy of a leader of a peace congress. Gretchen saw the plan in part, but did not fully comprehend it. She could only see that his life had become a struggle between good and evil, and that he was now following some good impulse of his better nature.