CHAPTER VII.
THE SMOKE-TALK.
One day in September Mrs. Woods was at work in her cabin, and Gretchen was at school. Mrs. Woods was trying to sing. She had a hard, harsh voice always, and the tune was a battle-cry. The hymn on which she was exercising her limited gifts was not one of the happy tunes of Methodism, which early settlers on the Columbia loved to sing. It was a very censorious rhyme and took a very despondent view of the human heart:
"The pure testimony poured forth from the Spirit
Cuts like a two-edgèd sword;
And hypocrites now are most sorely tormented
Because they're condemnèd by the Word."
She made the word "hypocrites" ring through the solitary log-cabin—she seemed to have the view that a large population of the world were of this class of people. She paused in her singing and looked out of the door.
"There's one honest woman alive," she remarked to herself. "Thank Heaven, I never yet feared the face of clay!"
A tall, dark form met her eye—a great shadow in the scintillant sunlight. It was an aged Indian, walking with a staff. He was coming toward the cabin.
"Umatilla!" she said. "What can he want of me?"
The old chief approached, and bowed and sat down on a log that answered for a door-step.
"I walk with a staff now," he said. "My bow has drifted away on the tide of years—it will never come back again. I am old."