Categoria: English

[Illustration]

The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

by Robert Louis Stevenson

TO
KATHARINE DE MATTOS.

It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;
Still will we be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie.

Contents

STORY OF THE DOOR
SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE
DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE
THE CAREW MURDER CASE
INCIDENT OF THE LETTER
REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON
INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW
THE LAST NIGHT
DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE
HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

STORY OF THE DOOR

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was
never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse;
backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow
lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste,
something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which
never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these
silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in
the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he
was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the
theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had
an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with
envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and
in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to
Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the
devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune
to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in
the lives of down-going men. And to such as these, so long as they came
about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative
at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar
catholicity of good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept
his friendly circle ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that
was the lawyer’s way. His friends were those of his own blood or those
whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the
growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object. Hence, no doubt,
the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman,
the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for many, what
these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find in
common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday
walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull, and would hail
with obvious relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two
men put the greatest store by these excursions, counted them the chief
jewel of each week, and not only set aside occasions of pleasure, but
even resisted the calls of business, that they might enjoy them
uninterrupted.

It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a
by-street in a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is
called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on the week-days. The
inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed, and all emulously hoping to
do better still, and laying out the surplus of their gains in coquetry;
so that the shop fronts stood along that thoroughfare with an air of
invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even on Sunday, when it
veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage,
the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a
fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished
brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught
and pleased the eye of the passenger.

Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east, the line was
broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point, a certain
sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street. It
was two stories high; showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower
story and a blind forehead of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore
in every feature, the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence. The
door, which was equipped with neither bell nor knocker, was blistered
and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and struck matches on
the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried
his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had
appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their
ravages.

Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but
when they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and
pointed.

“Did you ever remark that door?” he asked; and when his companion had
replied in the affirmative, “It is connected in my mind,” added he,
“with a very odd story.”

“Indeed?” said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice, “and what
was that?”

“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming home from
some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black
winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was
literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street, and all
the folks asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a
procession and all as empty as a church—till at last I got into that
state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the
sight of a policeman. All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man
who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of
maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross
street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the
corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man
trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the
ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t
like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a view-halloa,
took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where
there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was
perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly
that it brought out the sweat on me like running. The people who had
turned out were the girl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for
whom she had been sent, put in his appearance. Well, the child was not
much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there
you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one
curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first
sight. So had the child’s family, which was only natural. But the
doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut-and-dry
apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh
accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the
rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones
turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his
mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the
question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make
such a scandal out of this, as should make his name stink from one end
of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we
undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we were
pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we
could, for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such
hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of
black, sneering coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying
it off, sir, really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of
this accident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but
wishes to avoid a scene,’ says he. ‘Name your figure.’ Well, we screwed
him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family; he would have
clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us
that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get
the money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with
the door?— whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the
matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts’s,
drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention,
though it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least
very well known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the
signature was good for more than that, if it was only genuine. I took
the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman that the whole business
looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a
cellar door at four in the morning and come out of it with another
man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and
sneering. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I will stay with you till
the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we all set off, the
doctor, and the child’s father, and our friend and myself, and passed
the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had
breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the check myself,
and said I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of
it. The cheque was genuine.”

“Tut-tut,” said Mr. Utterson.

“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. Enfield. “Yes, it’s a bad story. For
my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a really
damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of
the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your
fellows who do what they call good. Black-mail, I suppose; an honest
man paying through the nose for some of the capers of his youth.
Black-Mail House is what I call that place with the door, in
consequence. Though even that, you know, is far from explaining all,”
he added, and with the words fell into a vein of musing.

From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: “And
you don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”

“A likely place, isn’t it?” returned Mr. Enfield. “But I happen to have
noticed his address; he lives in some square or other.”

“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr. Utterson.

“No, sir: I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel very strongly about
putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of
judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit
quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others;
and presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of)
is knocked on the head in his own back-garden and the family have to
change their name. No, sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks
like Queer Street, the less I ask.”

“A very good rule, too,” said the lawyer.

“But I have studied the place for myself,” continued Mr. Enfield. “It
seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or
out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my
adventure. There are three windows looking on the court on the first
floor; none below; the windows are always shut but they’re clean. And
then there is a chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must
live there. And yet it’s not so sure; for the buildings are so packed
together about that court, that it’s hard to say where one ends and
another begins.”

The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then, “Enfield,”
said Mr. Utterson, “that’s a good rule of yours.”

“Yes, I think it is,” returned Enfield.

“But for all that,” continued the lawyer, “there’s one point I want to
ask: I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child.”

“Well,” said Mr. Enfield, “I can’t see what harm it would do. It was a
man of the name of Hyde.”

“H’m,” said Mr. Utterson. “What sort of a man is he to see?”

“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his
appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I
never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be
deformed somewhere; he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I
couldn’t specify the point. He’s an extraordinary-looking man, and yet
I really can name nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand
of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare
I can see him this moment.”

Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a
weight of consideration.

“You are sure he used a key?” he inquired at last.

“My dear sir…” began Enfield, surprised out of himself.

“Yes, I know,” said Utterson; “I know it must seem strange. The fact
is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because I
know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have
been inexact in any point, you had better correct it.”

“I think you might have warned me,” returned the other, with a touch of
sullenness. “But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The
fellow had a key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it,
not a week ago.”

Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man
presently resumed. “Here is another lesson to say nothing,” said he. “I
am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to
this again.”

“With all my heart,” said the lawyer. “I shake hands on that, Richard.”

SEARCH FOR MR. HYDE

That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in sombre
spirits and sat down to dinner without relish. It was his custom of a
Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the fire, a volume of
some dry divinity on his reading-desk, until the clock of the
neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when he would go
soberly and gratefully to bed. On this night, however, as soon as the
cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went into his
business-room. There he opened his safe, took from the most private
part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr. Jekyll’s Will,
and sat down with a clouded brow to study its contents. The will was
holograph, for Mr. Utterson, though he took charge of it now that it
was made, had refused to lend the least assistance in the making of it;
it provided not only that, in case of the decease of Henry Jekyll,
M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc., all his possessions were to pass
into the hands of his “friend and benefactor Edward Hyde,” but that in
case of Dr. Jekyll’s “disappearance or unexplained absence for any
period exceeding three calendar months,” the said Edward Hyde should
step into the said Henry Jekyll’s shoes without further delay and free
from any burthen or obligation, beyond the payment of a few small sums
to the members of the doctor’s household. This document had long been
the lawyer’s eyesore. It offended him both as a lawyer and as a lover
of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom the fanciful was the
immodest. And hitherto it was his ignorance of Mr. Hyde that had
swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden turn, it was his knowledge.
It was already bad enough when the name was but a name of which he
could learn no more. It was worse when it began to be clothed upon with
detestable attributes; and out of the shifting, insubstantial mists
that had so long baffled his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite
presentment of a fiend.

“I thought it was madness,” he said, as he replaced the obnoxious paper
in the safe, “and now I begin to fear it is disgrace.”

With that he blew out his candle, put on a great-coat, and set forth in
the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of medicine, where his
friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house and received his crowding
patients. “If any one knows, it will be Lanyon,” he had thought.

The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to no stage
of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the dining-room where Dr.
Lanyon sat alone over his wine. This was a hearty, healthy, dapper,
red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a
boisterous and decided manner. At sight of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up
from his chair and welcomed him with both hands. The geniality, as was
the way of the man, was somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed
on genuine feeling. For these two were old friends, old mates both at
school and college, both thorough respecters of themselves and of each
other, and, what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed
each other’s company.

After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject which so
disagreeably pre-occupied his mind.

“I suppose, Lanyon,” said he “you and I must be the two oldest friends
that Henry Jekyll has?”

“I wish the friends were younger,” chuckled Dr. Lanyon. “But I suppose
we are. And what of that? I see little of him now.”

“Indeed?” said Utterson. “I thought you had a bond of common interest.”

“We had,” was the reply. “But it is more than ten years since Henry
Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind;
and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old
sake’s sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the
man. Such unscientific balderdash,” added the doctor, flushing suddenly
purple, “would have estranged Damon and Pythias.”

This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Utterson.
“They have only differed on some point of science,” he thought; and
being a man of no scientific passions (except in the matter of
conveyancing), he even added: “It is nothing worse than that!” He gave
his friend a few seconds to recover his composure, and then approached
the question he had come to put. “Did you ever come across a protege of
his—one Hyde?” he asked.

“Hyde?” repeated Lanyon. “No. Never heard of him. Since my time.”

That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried back with
him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and fro, until the
small hours of the morning began to grow large. It was a night of
little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere darkness and besieged
by questions.

Six o’clock struck on the bells of the church that was so conveniently
near to Mr. Utterson’s dwelling, and still he was digging at the
problem. Hitherto it had touched him on the intellectual side alone;
but now his imagination also was engaged, or rather enslaved; and as he
lay and tossed in the gross darkness of the night and the curtained
room, Mr. Enfield’s tale went by before his mind in a scroll of lighted
pictures. He would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal
city; then of the figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child
running from the doctor’s; and then these met, and that human
Juggernaut trod the child down and passed on regardless of her screams.
Or else he would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay
asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that
room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the
sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to
whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do
its bidding. The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all
night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide
more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and
still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of
lamplighted city, and at every street-corner crush a child and leave
her screaming. And still the figure had no face by which he might know
it; even in his dreams, it had no face, or one that baffled him and
melted before his eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew
apace in the lawyer’s mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate,
curiosity to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde. If he could but
once set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps
roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when well
examined. He might see a reason for his friend’s strange preference or
bondage (call it which you please) and even for the startling clause of
the will. At least it would be a face worth seeing: the face of a man
who was without bowels of mercy: a face which had but to show itself to
raise up, in the mind of the unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of
enduring hatred.

From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door in the
by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when
business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the
fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or
concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.

“If he be Mr. Hyde,” he had thought, “I shall be Mr. Seek.”

And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost
in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps,
unshaken, by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow.
By ten o’clock, when the shops were closed, the by-street was very
solitary and, in spite of the low growl of London from all round, very
silent. Small sounds carried far; domestic sounds out of the houses
were clearly audible on either side of the roadway; and the rumour of
the approach of any passenger preceded him by a long time. Mr. Utterson
had been some minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd, light
footstep drawing near. In the course of his nightly patrols, he had
long grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls of
a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly spring out
distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city. Yet his attention
had never before been so sharply and decisively arrested; and it was
with a strong, superstitious prevision of success that he withdrew into
the entry of the court.

The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder as they
turned the end of the street. The lawyer, looking forth from the entry,
could soon see what manner of man he had to deal with. He was small and
very plainly dressed, and the look of him, even at that distance, went
somehow strongly against the watcher’s inclination. But he made
straight for the door, crossing the roadway to save time; and as he
came, he drew a key from his pocket like one approaching home.

Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he passed.
“Mr. Hyde, I think?”

Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath. But his fear
was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer in the face,
he answered coolly enough: “That is my name. What do you want?”

“I see you are going in,” returned the lawyer. “I am an old friend of
Dr. Jekyll’s—Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street—you must have heard my name;
and meeting you so conveniently, I thought you might admit me.”

“You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home,” replied Mr. Hyde,
blowing in the key. And then suddenly, but still without looking up,
“How did you know me?” he asked.

“On your side,” said Mr. Utterson, “will you do me a favour?”

“With pleasure,” replied the other. “What shall it be?”

“Will you let me see your face?” asked the lawyer.

Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some sudden
reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the pair stared
at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds. “Now I shall know you
again,” said Mr. Utterson. “It may be useful.”

“Yes,” returned Mr. Hyde, “it is as well we have, met; and _à propos_,
you should have my address.” And he gave a number of a street in Soho.

“Good God!” thought Mr. Utterson, “can he, too, have been thinking of
the will?” But he kept his feelings to himself and only grunted in
acknowledgment of the address.

“And now,” said the other, “how did you know me?”

“By description,” was the reply.

“Whose description?”

“We have common friends,” said Mr. Utterson.

“Common friends?” echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely. “Who are they?”

“Jekyll, for instance,” said the lawyer.

“He never told you,” cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger. “I did not
think you would have lied.”

“Come,” said Mr. Utterson, “that is not fitting language.”

The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next moment, with
extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and disappeared into
the house.

The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the picture of
disquietude. Then he began slowly to mount the street, pausing every
step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a man in mental
perplexity. The problem he was thus debating as he walked, was one of a
class that is rarely solved. Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an
impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a
displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of
murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky,
whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against
him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown
disgust, loathing, and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him.
“There must be something else,” said the perplexed gentleman. “There is
something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man
seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be
the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul
that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The
last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan’s
signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend.”

Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of ancient,
handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their high estate
and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and conditions of men:
map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers, and the agents of obscure
enterprises. One house, however, second from the corner, was still
occupied entire; and at the door of this, which wore a great air of
wealth and comfort, though it was now plunged in darkness except for
the fan-light, Mr. Utterson stopped and knocked. A well-dressed,
elderly servant opened the door.

“Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?” asked the lawyer.

“I will see, Mr. Utterson,” said Poole, admitting the visitor, as he
spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall, paved with flags,
warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright, open fire,
and furnished with costly cabinets of oak. “Will you wait here by the
fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the dining room?”

“Here, thank you,” said the lawyer, and he drew near and leaned on the
tall fender. This hall, in which he was now left alone, was a pet fancy
of his friend the doctor’s; and Utterson himself was wont to speak of
it as the pleasantest room in London. But to-night there was a shudder
in his blood; the face of Hyde sat heavy on his memory; he felt (what
was rare with him) a nausea and distaste of life; and in the gloom of
his spirits, he seemed to read a menace in the flickering of the
firelight on the polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the
shadow on the roof. He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently
returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

“I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting-room door, Poole,” he said.
“Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?”

“Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir,” replied the servant. “Mr. Hyde has a
key.”

“Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that young man,
Poole,” resumed the other musingly.

“Yes, sir, he do indeed,” said Poole. “We have all orders to obey him.”

“I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?” asked Utterson.

“O, dear no, sir. He never _dines_ here,” replied the butler. “Indeed
we see very little of him on this side of the house; he mostly comes
and goes by the laboratory.”

“Well, good-night, Poole.”

“Good-night, Mr. Utterson.”

And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart. “Poor Harry
Jekyll,” he thought, “my mind misgives me he is in deep waters! He was
wild when he was young; a long while ago to be sure; but in the law of
God, there is no statute of limitations. Ay, it must be that; the ghost
of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace: punishment
coming, _pede claudo_, years after memory has forgotten and self-love
condoned the fault.” And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded a
while on his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, lest by
chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to light
there. His past was fairly blameless; few men could read the rolls of
their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled to the dust by
the many ill things he had done, and raised up again into a sober and
fearful gratitude by the many that he had come so near to doing, yet
avoided. And then by a return on his former subject, he conceived a
spark of hope. “This Master Hyde, if he were studied,” thought he,
“must have secrets of his own; black secrets, by the look of him;
secrets compared to which poor Jekyll’s worst would be like sunshine.
Things cannot continue as they are. It turns me cold to think of this
creature stealing like a thief to Harry’s bedside; poor Harry, what a
wakening! And the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence
of the will, he may grow impatient to inherit. Ay, I must put my
shoulder to the wheel if Jekyll will but let me,” he added, “if Jekyll
will only let me.” For once more he saw before his mind’s eye, as clear
as a transparency, the strange clauses of the will.

DR. JEKYLL WAS QUITE AT EASE

A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of
his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all intelligent,
reputable men and all judges of good wine; and Mr. Utterson so
contrived that he remained behind after the others had departed. This
was no new arrangement, but a thing that had befallen many scores of
times. Where Utterson was liked, he was liked well. Hosts loved to
detain the dry lawyer, when the light-hearted and the loose-tongued had
already their foot on the threshold; they liked to sit a while in his
unobtrusive company, practising for solitude, sobering their minds in
the man’s rich silence after the expense and strain of gaiety. To this
rule, Dr. Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite
side of the fire—a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with
something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and
kindness—you could see by his looks that he cherished for Mr. Utterson
a sincere and warm affection.

“I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll,” began the latter. “You
know that will of yours?”

A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful;
but the doctor carried it off gaily. “My poor Utterson,” said he, “you
are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as
you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at
what he called my scientific heresies. Oh, I know he’s a good
fellow—you needn’t frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see
more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant
pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon.”

“You know I never approved of it,” pursued Utterson, ruthlessly
disregarding the fresh topic.

“My will? Yes, certainly, I know that,” said the doctor, a trifle
sharply. “You have told me so.”

“Well, I tell you so again,” continued the lawyer. “I have been
learning something of young Hyde.”

The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very lips, and
there came a blackness about his eyes. “I do not care to hear more,”
said he. “This is a matter I thought we had agreed to drop.”

“What I heard was abominable,” said Utterson.

“It can make no change. You do not understand my position,” returned
the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner. “I am painfully
situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange—a very strange one.
It is one of those affairs that cannot be mended by talking.”

“Jekyll,” said Utterson, “you know me: I am a man to be trusted. Make a
clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no doubt I can get you
out of it.”

“My good Utterson,” said the doctor, “this is very good of you, this is
downright good of you, and I cannot find words to thank you in. I
believe you fully; I would trust you before any man alive, ay, before
myself, if I could make the choice; but indeed it isn’t what you fancy;
it is not so bad as that; and just to put your good heart at rest, I
will tell you one thing: the moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.
I give you my hand upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I
will just add one little word, Utterson, that I’m sure you’ll take in
good part: this is a private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep.”

Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire.

“I have no doubt you are perfectly right,” he said at last, getting to
his feet.

“Well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for the last
time I hope,” continued the doctor, “there is one point I should like
you to understand. I have really a very great interest in poor Hyde. I
know you have seen him; he told me so; and I fear he was rude. But, I
do sincerely take a great, a very great interest in that young man; and
if I am taken away, Utterson, I wish you to promise me that you will
bear with him and get his rights for him. I think you would, if you
knew all; and it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise.”

“I can’t pretend that I shall ever like him,” said the lawyer.

“I don’t ask that,” pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the other’s
arm; “I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him for my sake,
when I am no longer here.”

Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh. “Well,” said he, “I promise.”

THE CAREW MURDER CASE

Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18——, London was startled
by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by
the high position of the victim. The details were few and startling. A
maid servant living alone in a house not far from the river, had gone
up-stairs to bed about eleven. Although a fog rolled over the city in
the small hours, the early part of the night was cloudless, and the
lane, which the maid’s window overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the
full moon. It seems she was romantically given, for she sat down upon
her box, which stood immediately under the window, and fell into a
dream of musing. Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she
narrated that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all
men or thought more kindly of the world. And as she so sat she became
aware of an aged and beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near
along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small
gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come
within speech (which was just under the maid’s eyes) the older man
bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness.
It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great
importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he
were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he
spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it seemed to breathe such
an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something
high too, as of a well-founded self-content. Presently her eye wandered
to the other, and she was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr.
Hyde, who had once visited her master and for whom she had conceived a
dislike. He had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling;
but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an
ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a
great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and
carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman. The old gentleman
took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle
hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to
the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his
victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the
bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At
the horror of these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.

It was two o’clock when she came to herself and called for the police.
The murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle
of the lane, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been
done, although it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had
broken in the middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and
one splintered half had rolled in the neighbouring gutter—the other,
without doubt, had been carried away by the murderer. A purse and a
gold watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a
sealed and stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the
post, and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson.

This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of
bed; and he had no sooner seen it, and been told the circumstances,
than he shot out a solemn lip. “I shall say nothing till I have seen
the body,” said he; “this may be very serious. Have the kindness to
wait while I dress.” And with the same grave countenance he hurried
through his breakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body
had been carried. As soon as he came into the cell, he nodded.

“Yes,” said he, “I recognise him. I am sorry to say that this is Sir
Danvers Carew.”

“Good God, sir,” exclaimed the officer, “is it possible?” And the next
moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition. “This will make a
deal of noise,” he said. “And perhaps you can help us to the man.” And
he briefly narrated what the maid had seen, and showed the broken
stick.

Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when the
stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and
battered as it was, he recognised it for one that he had himself
presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.

“Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature?” he inquired.

“Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the maid
calls him,” said the officer.

Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, “If you will come
with me in my cab,” he said, “I think I can take you to his house.”

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the
season. A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over heaven, but the
wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapours; so
that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a
marvellous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be
dark like the back-end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich,
lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here,
for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of
daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal
quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy
ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been
extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful
re-invasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district
of some city in a nightmare. The thoughts of his mind, besides, were of
the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive,
he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law’s
officers, which may at times assail the most honest.

As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog lifted a
little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low French
eating-house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and twopenny
salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and many women of
different nationalities passing out, key in hand, to have a morning
glass; and the next moment the fog settled down again upon that part,
as brown as umber, and cut him off from his blackguardly surroundings.
This was the home of Henry Jekyll’s favourite; of a man who was heir to
a quarter of a million sterling.

An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door. She had an
evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent. Yes,
she said, this was Mr. Hyde’s, but he was not at home; he had been in
that night very late, but had gone away again in less than an hour;
there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and
he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she
had seen him till yesterday.

“Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms,” said the lawyer; and when
the woman began to declare it was impossible, “I had better tell you
who this person is,” he added. “This is Inspector Newcomen of Scotland
Yard.”

A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman’s face. “Ah!” said she,
“he is in trouble! What has he done?”

Mr. Utterson and the inspector exchanged glances. “He don’t seem a very
popular character,” observed the latter. “And now, my good woman, just
let me and this gentleman have a look about us.”

In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman remained
otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of rooms; but these
were furnished with luxury and good taste. A closet was filled with
wine; the plate was of silver, the napery elegant; a good picture hung
upon the walls, a gift (as Utterson supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who
was much of a connoisseur; and the carpets were of many plies and
agreeable in colour. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark
of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the
floor, with their pockets inside out; lock-fast drawers stood open; and
on the hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had
been burned. From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt-end
of a green cheque-book, which had resisted the action of the fire; the
other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched
his suspicions, the officer declared himself delighted. A visit to the
bank, where several thousand pounds were found to be lying to the
murderer’s credit, completed his gratification.

“You may depend upon it, sir,” he told Mr. Utterson: “I have him in my
hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick
or, above all, burned the cheque-book. Why, money’s life to the man. We
have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the
handbills.”

This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr. Hyde had
numbered few familiars—even the master of the servant-maid had only
seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been
photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as
common observers will. Only on one point, were they agreed; and that
was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive
impressed his beholders.

INCIDENT OF THE LETTER

It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to Dr.
Jekyll’s door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and carried down
by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had once been a garden,
to the building which was indifferently known as the laboratory or the
dissecting-rooms. The doctor had bought the house from the heirs of a
celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes being rather chemical than
anatomical, had changed the destination of the block at the bottom of
the garden. It was the first time that the lawyer had been received in
that part of his friend’s quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless
structure with curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of
strangeness as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students
and now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical
apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing
straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola. At the
further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with red
baize; and through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received into the
doctor’s cabinet. It was a large room, fitted round with glass presses,
furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass and a business
table, and looking out upon the court by three dusty windows barred
with iron. A fire burned in the grate; a lamp was set lighted on the
chimney shelf, for even in the houses the fog began to lie thickly; and
there, close up to the warmth, sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deadly sick. He
did not rise to meet his visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him
welcome in a changed voice.

“And now,” said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them, “you have
heard the news?”

The doctor shuddered. “They were crying it in the square,” he said. “I
heard them in my dining-room.”

“One word,” said the lawyer. “Carew was my client, but so are you, and
I want to know what I am doing. You have not been mad enough to hide
this fellow?”

“Utterson, I swear to God,” cried the doctor, “I swear to God I will
never set eyes on him again. I bind my honour to you that I am done
with him in this world. It is all at an end. And indeed he does not
want my help; you do not know him as I do; he is safe, he is quite
safe; mark my words, he will never more be heard of.”

The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend’s feverish
manner. “You seem pretty sure of him,” said he; “and for your sake, I
hope you may be right. If it came to a trial, your name might appear.”

“I am quite sure of him,” replied Jekyll; “I have grounds for certainty
that I cannot share with any one. But there is one thing on which you
may advise me. I have—I have received a letter; and I am at a loss
whether I should show it to the police. I should like to leave it in
your hands, Utterson; you would judge wisely, I am sure; I have so
great a trust in you.”

“You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?” asked the
lawyer.

“No,” said the other. “I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I
am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this
hateful business has rather exposed.”

Utterson ruminated a while; he was surprised at his friend’s
selfishness, and yet relieved by it. “Well,” said he, at last, “let me
see the letter.”

The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed “Edward
Hyde”: and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer’s benefactor,
Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for a thousand
generosities, need labour under no alarm for his safety, as he had
means of escape on which he placed a sure dependence. The lawyer liked
this letter well enough; it put a better colour on the intimacy than he
had looked for; and he blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.

“Have you the envelope?” he asked.

“I burned it,” replied Jekyll, “before I thought what I was about. But
it bore no postmark. The note was handed in.”

“Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?” asked Utterson.

“I wish you to judge for me entirely,” was the reply. “I have lost
confidence in myself.”

“Well, I shall consider,” returned the lawyer. “And now one word more:
it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about that
disappearance?”

The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness: he shut his mouth
tight and nodded.

“I knew it,” said Utterson. “He meant to murder you. You have had a
fine escape.”

“I have had what is far more to the purpose,” returned the doctor
solemnly: “I have had a lesson—O God, Utterson, what a lesson I have
had!” And he covered his face for a moment with his hands.

On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with Poole.
“By the by,” said he, “there was a letter handed in to-day: what was
the messenger like?” But Poole was positive nothing had come except by
post; “and only circulars by that,” he added.

This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed. Plainly the
letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly, indeed, it had been
written in the cabinet; and if that were so, it must be differently
judged, and handled with the more caution. The newsboys, as he went,
were crying themselves hoarse along the footways: “Special edition.
Shocking murder of an M. P.” That was the funeral oration of one friend
and client; and he could not help a certain apprehension lest the good
name of another should be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal. It
was, at least, a ticklish decision that he had to make; and
self-reliant as he was by habit, he began to cherish a longing for
advice. It was not to be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it
might be fished for.

Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with Mr. Guest,
his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at a nicely
calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a particular old wine
that had long dwelt unsunned in the foundations of his house. The fog
still slept on the wing above the drowned city, where the lamps
glimmered like carbuncles; and through the muffle and smother of these
fallen clouds, the procession of the town’s life was still rolling in
through the great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind. But the
room was gay with firelight. In the bottle the acids were long ago
resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, As the colour grows
richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on
hillside vineyards was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of
London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he
kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he
kept as many as he meant. Guest had often been on business to the
doctor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr.
Hyde’s familiarity about the house; he might draw conclusions: was it
not as well, then, that he should see a letter which put that mystery
to rights? and above all since Guest, being a great student and critic
of handwriting, would consider the step natural and obliging? The
clerk, besides, was a man of counsel; he would scarce read so strange a
document without dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Utterson
might shape his future course.

“This is a sad business about Sir Danvers,” he said.

“Yes, sir, indeed. It has elicited a great deal of public feeling,”
returned Guest. “The man, of course, was mad.”

“I should like to hear your views on that,” replied Utterson. “I have a
document here in his handwriting; it is between ourselves, for I scarce
know what to do about it; it is an ugly business at the best. But there
it is; quite in your way a murderer’s autograph.”

Guest’s eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied it with
passion. “No, sir,” he said: “not mad; but it is an odd hand.”

“And by all accounts a very odd writer,” added the lawyer.

Just then the servant entered with a note.

“Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?” inquired the clerk. “I thought I knew
the writing. Anything private, Mr. Utterson?”

“Only an invitation to dinner. Why? Do you want to see it?”

“One moment. I thank you, sir”; and the clerk laid the two sheets of
paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents. “Thank you,
sir,” he said at last, returning both; “it’s a very interesting
autograph.”

There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with himself.
“Why did you compare them, Guest?” he inquired suddenly.

“Well, sir,” returned the clerk, “there’s a rather singular
resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical: only
differently sloped.”

“Rather quaint,” said Utterson.

“It is, as you say, rather quaint,” returned Guest.

“I wouldn’t speak of this note, you know,” said the master.

“No, sir,” said the clerk. “I understand.”

But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night than he locked the note
into his safe, where it reposed from that time forward. “What!” he
thought. “Henry Jekyll forge for a murderer!” And his blood ran cold in
his veins.

REMARKABLE INCIDENT OF DR. LANYON

Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the death
of Sir Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr. Hyde had
disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had never
existed. Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all disreputable:
tales came out of the man’s cruelty, at once so callous and violent; of
his vile life, of his strange associates, of the hatred that seemed to
have surrounded his career; but of his present whereabouts, not a
whisper. From the time he had left the house in Soho on the morning of
the murder, he was simply blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on,
Mr. Utterson began to recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to
grow more at quiet with himself. The death of Sir Danvers was, to his
way of thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde.
Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began for
Dr. Jekyll. He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations with his
friends, became once more their familiar guest and entertainer; and
whilst he had always been known for charities, he was now no less
distinguished for religion. He was busy, he was much in the open air,
he did good; his face seemed to open and brighten, as if with an inward
consciousness of service; and for more than two months, the doctor was
at peace.

On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor’s with a small
party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had looked from
one to the other as in the old days when the trio were inseparable
friends. On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door was shut against
the lawyer. “The doctor was confined to the house,” Poole said, “and
saw no one.” On the 15th, he tried again, and was again refused; and
having now been used for the last two months to see his friend almost
daily, he found this return of solitude to weigh upon his spirits. The
fifth night he had in Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook
himself to Dr. Lanyon’s.

There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came in, he
was shocked at the change which had taken place in the doctor’s
appearance. He had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face. The
rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly
balder and older; and yet it was not so much, these tokens of a swift
physical decay that arrested the lawyer’s notice, as a look in the eye
and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror
of the mind. It was unlikely that the doctor should fear death; and yet
that was what Utterson was tempted to suspect. “Yes,” he thought; “he
is a doctor, he must know his own state and that his days are counted;
and the knowledge is more than he can bear.” And yet when Utterson
remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of greatness that Lanyon
declared himself a doomed man.

“I have had a shock,” he said, “and I shall never recover. It is a
question of weeks. Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it; yes, sir,
I used to like it. I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more
glad to get away.”

“Jekyll is ill, too,” observed Utterson. “Have you seen him?”

But Lanyon’s face changed, and he held up a trembling hand. “I wish to
see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll,” he said in a loud, unsteady voice.
“I am quite done with that person; and I beg that you will spare me any
allusion to one whom I regard as dead.”

“Tut-tut,” said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable pause,
“Can’t I do anything?” he inquired. “We are three very old friends,
Lanyon; we shall not live to make others.”

“Nothing can be done,” returned Lanyon; “ask himself.”

“He will not see me,” said the lawyer.

“I am not surprised at that,” was the reply. “Some day, Utterson, after
I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I
cannot tell you. And in the meantime, if you can sit and talk with me
of other things, for God’s sake, stay and do so; but if you cannot keep
clear of this accursed topic, then, in God’s name, go, for I cannot
bear it.”

As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll,
complaining of his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause of
this unhappy break with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a long
answer, often very pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly mysterious
in drift. The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable. “I do not blame our
old friend,” Jekyll wrote, “but I share his view that we must never
meet. I mean from henceforth to lead a life of extreme seclusion; you
must not be surprised, nor must you doubt my friendship, if my door is
often shut even to you. You must suffer me to go my own dark way. I
have brought on myself a punishment and a danger that I cannot name. If
I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also. I could
not think that this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors
so unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this
destiny, and that is to respect my silence.” Utterson was amazed; the
dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had returned to
his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect had smiled with
every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age; and now in a moment,
friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole tenor of his life were
wrecked. So great and unprepared a change pointed to madness; but in
view of Lanyon’s manner and words, there must lie for it some deeper
ground.

A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something less
than a fortnight he was dead. The night after the funeral, at which he
had been sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of his business room,
and sitting there by the light of a melancholy candle, drew out and set
before him an envelope addressed by the hand and sealed with the seal
of his dead friend. “PRIVATE: for the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE and
in case of his predecease _to be destroyed unread_,” so it was
emphatically superscribed; and the lawyer dreaded to behold the
contents. “I have buried one friend to-day,” he thought: “what if this
should cost me another?” And then he condemned the fear as a
disloyalty, and broke the seal. Within there was another enclosure,
likewise sealed, and marked upon the cover as “not to be opened till
the death or disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll.” Utterson could not
trust his eyes. Yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad
will which he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the
idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll bracketed. But in
the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion of the man
Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and horrible.
Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean? A great curiosity
came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition and dive at once to
the bottom of these mysteries; but professional honour and faith to his
dead friend were stringent obligations; and the packet slept in the
inmost corner of his private safe.

It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it; and it may
be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired the society of his
surviving friend with the same eagerness. He thought of him kindly; but
his thoughts were disquieted and fearful. He went to call indeed; but
he was perhaps relieved to be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart,
he preferred to speak with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by
the air and sounds of the open city, rather than to be admitted into
that house of voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its
inscrutable recluse. Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to
communicate. The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined
himself to the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes
even sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not
read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind. Utterson became so
used to the unvarying character of these reports, that he fell off
little by little in the frequency of his visits.

INCIDENT AT THE WINDOW

It chanced on Sunday, when Mr. Utterson was on his usual walk with Mr.
Enfield, that their way lay once again through the by-street; and that
when they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze on it.

“Well,” said Enfield, “that story’s at an end at least. We shall never
see more of Mr. Hyde.”

“I hope not,” said Utterson. “Did I ever tell you that I once saw him,
and shared your feeling of repulsion?”

“It was impossible to do the one without the other,” returned Enfield.
“And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me, not to know that
this was a back way to Dr. Jekyll’s! It was partly your own fault that
I found it out, even when I did.”

“So you found it out, did you?” said Utterson. “But if that be so, we
may step into the court and take a look at the windows. To tell you the
truth, I am uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even outside, I feel as if
the presence of a friend might do him good.”

The court was very cool and a little damp, and full of premature
twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still bright with
sunset. The middle one of the three windows was half-way open; and
sitting close beside it, taking the air with an infinite sadness of
mien, like some disconsolate prisoner, Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.

“What! Jekyll!” he cried. “I trust you are better.”

“I am very low, Utterson,” replied the doctor, drearily, “very low. It
will not last long, thank God.”

“You stay too much indoors,” said the lawyer. “You should be out,
whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me. (This is my
cousin—Mr. Enfield—Dr. Jekyll.) Come, now; get your hat and take a
quick turn with us.”

“You are very good,” sighed the other. “I should like to very much; but
no, no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not. But indeed, Utterson, I
am very glad to see you; this is really a great pleasure; I would ask
you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place is really not fit.”

“Why then,” said the lawyer, good-naturedly, “the best thing we can do
is to stay down here and speak with you from where we are.”

“That is just what I was about to venture to propose,” returned the
doctor with a smile. But the words were hardly uttered, before the
smile was struck out of his face and succeeded by an expression of such
abject terror and despair, as froze the very blood of the two gentlemen
below. They saw it but for a glimpse, for the window was instantly
thrust down; but that glimpse had been sufficient, and they turned and
left the court without a word. In silence, too, they traversed the
by-street; and it was not until they had come into a neighbouring
thoroughfare, where even upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings
of life, that Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion.
They were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

“God forgive us, God forgive us,” said Mr. Utterson.

But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously and walked on once
more in silence.

THE LAST NIGHT

Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner, when
he was surprised to receive a visit from Poole.

“Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?” he cried; and then taking a
second look at him, “What ails you?” he added; “is the doctor ill?”

“Mr. Utterson,” said the man, “there is something wrong.”

“Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you,” said the lawyer.
“Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want.”

“You know the doctor’s ways, sir,” replied Poole, “and how he shuts
himself up. Well, he’s shut up again in the cabinet; and I don’t like
it, sir—I wish I may die if I like it. Mr. Utterson, sir, I’m afraid.”

“Now, my good man,” said the lawyer, “be explicit. What are you afraid
of?”

“I’ve been afraid for about a week,” returned Poole, doggedly
disregarding the question, “and I can bear it no more.”

The man’s appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was altered
for the worse; and except for the moment when he had first announced
his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in the face. Even now, he
sat with the glass of wine untasted on his knee, and his eyes directed
to a corner of the floor. “I can bear it no more,” he repeated.

“Come,” said the lawyer, “I see you have some good reason, Poole; I see
there is something seriously amiss. Try to tell me what it is.”

“I think there’s been foul play,” said Poole, hoarsely.

“Foul play!” cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and rather
inclined to be irritated in consequence. “What foul play? What does the
man mean?”

“I daren’t say, sir,” was the answer; “but will you come along with me
and see for yourself?”

Mr. Utterson’s only answer was to rise and get his hat and great-coat;
but he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief that appeared
upon the butler’s face, and perhaps with no less, that the wine was
still untasted when he set it down to follow.

It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying
on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of
the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult,
and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the
streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought
he had never seen that part of London so deserted. He could have wished
it otherwise; never in his life had he been conscious of so sharp a
wish to see and touch his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might,
there was borne in upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity.
The square, when they got there, was all full of wind and dust, and the
thin trees in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing.
Poole, who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in
the middle of the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took
off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief. But for
all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of exertion that
he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling anguish; for his
face was white and his voice, when he spoke, harsh and broken.

“Well, sir,” he said, “here we are, and God grant there be nothing
wrong.”

“Amen, Poole,” said the lawyer.

Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the door was
opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, “Is that you,
Poole?”

“It’s all right,” said Poole. “Open the door.”

The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the fire was
built high; and about the hearth the whole of the servants, men and
women, stood huddled together like a flock of sheep. At the sight of
Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into hysterical whimpering; and the
cook, crying out, “Bless God! it’s Mr. Utterson,” ran forward as if to
take him in her arms.

“What, what? Are you all here?” said the lawyer peevishly. “Very
irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far from pleased.”

“They’re all afraid,” said Poole.

Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid lifted up her
voice and now wept loudly.

“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that
testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so
suddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they had all started and
turned toward the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation. “And
now,” continued the butler, addressing the knife-boy, “reach me a
candle, and we’ll get this through hands at once.” And then he begged
Mr. Utterson to follow him, and led the way to the back-garden.

“Now, sir,” said he, “you come as gently as you can. I want you to
hear, and I don’t want you to be heard. And see here, sir, if by any
chance he was to ask you in, don’t go.”

Mr. Utterson’s nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave a jerk
that nearly threw him from his balance; but he re-collected his courage
and followed the butler into the laboratory building and through the
surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and bottles, to the foot of
the stair. Here Poole motioned him to stand on one side and listen;
while he himself, setting down the candle and making a great and
obvious call on his resolution, mounted the steps and knocked with a
somewhat uncertain hand on the red baize of the cabinet door.

“Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you,” he called; and even as he did
so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.

A voice answered from within: “Tell him I cannot see any one,” it said
complainingly.

“Thank you, sir,” said Poole, with a note of something like triumph in
his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr. Utterson back across
the yard and into the great kitchen, where the fire was out and the
beetles were leaping on the floor.

“Sir,” he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, “was that my master’s
voice?”

“It seems much changed,” replied the lawyer, very pale, but giving look
for look.

“Changed? Well, yes, I think so,” said the butler. “Have I been twenty
years in this man’s house, to be deceived about his voice? No, sir;
master’s made away with; he was made, away with eight days ago, when we
heard him cry out upon the name of God; and _who’s_ in there instead of
him, and _why_ it stays there, is a thing that cries to Heaven, Mr.
Utterson!”

“This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild tale, my
man,” said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger. “Suppose it were as you
suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been—well, murdered, what could
induce the murderer to stay? That won’t hold water; it doesn’t commend
itself to reason.”

“Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I’ll do it
yet,” said Poole. “All this last week (you must know) him, or it, or
whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying night and
day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his mind. It was
sometimes his way—the master’s, that is—to write his orders on a sheet
of paper and throw it on the stair. We’ve had nothing else this week
back; nothing but papers, and a closed door, and the very meals left
there to be smuggled in when nobody was looking. Well, sir, every day,
ay, and twice and thrice in the same day, there have been orders and
complaints, and I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists
in town. Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another
paper telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another
order to a different firm. This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir,
whatever for.”

“Have you any of these papers?” asked Mr. Utterson.

Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which the
lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined. Its contents
ran thus: “Dr. Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs. Maw. He
assures them that their last sample is impure and quite useless for his
present purpose. In the year 18——, Dr. J. purchased a somewhat large
quantity from Messrs. M. He now begs them to search with the most
sedulous care, and should any of the same quality be left, to forward
it to him at once. Expense is no consideration. The importance of this
to Dr. J. can hardly be exaggerated.” So far the letter had run
composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the
writer’s emotion had broken loose. “For God’s sake,” he had added,
“find me some of the old.”

“This is a strange note,” said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply, “How do
you come to have it open?”

“The man at Maw’s was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to me like
so much dirt,” returned Poole.

“This is unquestionably the doctor’s hand, do you know?” resumed the
lawyer.

“I thought it looked like it,” said the servant rather sulkily; and
then, with another voice, “But what matters hand-of-write?” he said.
“I’ve seen him!”

“Seen him?” repeated Mr. Utterson. “Well?”

“That’s it!” said Poole. “It was this way. I came suddenly into the
theatre from the garden. It seems he had slipped out to look for this
drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was open, and there he was
at the far end of the room digging among the crates. He looked up when
I came in, gave a kind of cry, and whipped up-stairs into the cabinet.
It was but for one minute that I saw him, but the hair stood upon my
head like quills. Sir, if that was my master, why had he a mask upon
his face? If it was my master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run
from me? I have served him long enough. And then…” The man paused and
passed his hand over his face.

“These are all very strange circumstances,” said Mr. Utterson, “but I
think I begin to see daylight. Your master, Poole, is plainly seized
with one of those maladies that both torture and deform the sufferer;
hence, for aught I know, the alteration of his voice; hence the mask
and the avoidance of his friends; hence his eagerness to find this
drug, by means of which the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate
recovery—God grant that he be not deceived! There is my explanation; it
is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain
and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant
alarms.”

“Sir,” said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor, “that
thing was not my master, and there’s the truth. My master”—here he
looked round him and began to whisper—“is a tall, fine build of a man,
and this was more of a dwarf.” Utterson attempted to protest. “O, sir,”
cried Poole, “do you think I do not know my master after twenty years?
Do you think I do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door,
where I saw him every morning of my life? No, Sir, that thing in the
mask was never Dr. Jekyll—God knows what it was, but it was never Dr.
Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder done.”

“Poole,” replied the lawyer, “if you say that, it will become my duty
to make certain. Much as I desire to spare your master’s feelings, much
as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove him to be still
alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in that door.”

“Ah Mr. Utterson, that’s talking!” cried the butler.

“And now comes the second question,” resumed Utterson: “Who is going to
do it?”

“Why, you and me,” was the undaunted reply.

“That’s very well said,” returned the lawyer; “and whatever comes of
it, I shall make it my business to see you are no loser.”

“There is an axe in the theatre,” continued Poole; “and you might take
the kitchen poker for yourself.”

The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his hand, and
balanced it. “Do you know, Poole,” he said, looking up, “that you and I
are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?”

“You may say so, sir, indeed,” returned the butler.

“It is well, then, that we should be frank,” said the other. “We both
think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast. This masked
figure that you saw, did you recognise it?”

“Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled up, that
I could hardly swear to that,” was the answer. “But if you mean, was it
Mr. Hyde?—why, yes, I think it was! You see, it was much of the same
bigness; and it had the same quick, light way with it; and then who
else could have got in by the laboratory door? You have not forgot, sir
that at the time of the murder he had still the key with him? But
that’s not all. I don’t know, Mr. Utterson, if ever you met this Mr.
Hyde?”

“Yes,” said the lawyer, “I once spoke with him.”

“Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was something
queer about that gentleman—something that gave a man a turn—I don’t
know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: that you felt it in your
marrow kind of cold and thin.”

“I own I felt something of what you describe,” said Mr. Utterson.

“Quite so, sir,” returned Poole. “Well, when that masked thing like a
monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped into the cabinet, it
went down my spine like ice. Oh, I know it’s not evidence, Mr.
Utterson. I’m book-learned enough for that; but a man has his feelings,
and I give you my bible-word it was Mr. Hyde!”

“Ay, ay,” said the lawyer. “My fears incline to the same point. Evil, I
fear, founded—evil was sure to come—of that connection. Ay, truly, I
believe you; I believe poor Harry is killed; and I believe his murderer
(for what purpose, God alone can tell) is still lurking in his victim’s
room. Well, let our name be vengeance. Call Bradshaw.”

The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.

“Pull yourself together, Bradshaw,” said the lawyer. “This suspense, I
know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our intention to make
an end of it. Poole, here, and I are going to force our way into the
cabinet. If all is well, my shoulders are broad enough to bear the
blame. Meanwhile, lest anything should really be amiss, or any
malefactor seek to escape by the back, you and the boy must go round
the corner with a pair of good sticks and take your post at the
laboratory door. We give you ten minutes to get to your stations.”

As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch. “And now, Poole, let
us get to ours,” he said; and taking the poker under his arm, led the
way into the yard. The scud had banked over the moon, and it was now
quite dark. The wind, which only broke in puffs and draughts into that
deep well of building, tossed the light of the candle to and fro about
their steps, until they came into the shelter of the theatre, where
they sat down silently to wait. London hummed solemnly all around; but
nearer at hand, the stillness was only broken by the sounds of a
footfall moving to and fro along the cabinet floor.

“So it will walk all day, sir,” whispered Poole; “ay, and the better
part of the night. Only when a new sample comes from the chemist,
there’s a bit of a break. Ah, it’s an ill conscience that’s such an
enemy to rest! Ah, sir, there’s blood foully shed in every step of it!
But hark again, a little closer—put your heart in your ears, Mr.
Utterson, and tell me, is that the doctor’s foot?”

The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for all they
went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy creaking tread
of Henry Jekyll. Utterson sighed. “Is there never anything else?” he
asked.

Poole nodded. “Once,” he said. “Once I heard it weeping!”

“Weeping? how that?” said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden chill of
horror.

“Weeping like a woman or a lost soul,” said the butler. “I came away
with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too.”

But now the ten minutes drew to an end. Poole disinterred the axe from
under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon the nearest
table to light them to the attack; and they drew near with bated breath
to where that patient foot was still going up and down, up and down, in
the quiet of the night.

“Jekyll,” cried Utterson, with a loud voice, “I demand to see you.” He
paused a moment, but there came no reply. “I give you fair warning, our
suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you,” he resumed; “if
not by fair means, then by foul! if not of your consent, then by brute
force!”

“Utterson,” said the voice, “for God’s sake, have mercy!”

“Ah, that’s not Jekyll’s voice—it’s Hyde’s!” cried Utterson. “Down with
the door, Poole!”

Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the building, and
the red baize door leaped against the lock and hinges. A dismal
screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the cabinet. Up went the
axe again, and again the panels crashed and the frame bounded; four
times the blow fell; but the wood was tough and the fittings were of
excellent workmanship; and it was not until the fifth, that the lock
burst in sunder and the wreck of the door fell inwards on the carpet.

The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness that had
succeeded, stood back a little and peered in. There lay the cabinet
before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and
chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer
or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business-table, and nearer
the fire, the things laid out for tea: the quietest room, you would
have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most
commonplace that night in London.

Right in the midst there lay the body of a man sorely contorted and
still twitching. They drew near on tiptoe, turned it on its back and
beheld the face of Edward Hyde. He was dressed in clothes far too large
for him, clothes of the doctor’s bigness; the cords of his face still
moved with a semblance of life, but life was quite gone; and by the
crushed phial in the hand and the strong smell of kernels that hung
upon the air, Utterson knew that he was looking on the body of a
self-destroyer.

“We have come too late,” he said sternly, “whether to save or punish.
Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us to find the
body of your master.”

The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by the theatre,
which filled almost the whole ground story and was lighted from above,
and by the cabinet, which formed an upper story at one end and looked
upon the court. A corridor joined the theatre to the door on the
by-street; and with this the cabinet communicated separately by a
second flight of stairs. There were besides a few dark closets and a
spacious cellar. All these they now thoroughly examined. Each closet
needed but a glance, for all were empty, and all, by the dust that fell
from their doors, had stood long unopened. The cellar, indeed, was
filled with crazy lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon
who was Jekyll’s predecessor; but even as they opened the door they
were advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a
perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance.
Nowhere was there any trace of Henry Jekyll, dead or alive.

Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor. “He must be buried here,”
he said, hearkening to the sound.

“Or he may have fled,” said Utterson, and he turned to examine the door
in the by-street. It was locked; and lying near by on the flags, they
found the key, already stained with rust.

“This does not look like use,” observed the lawyer.

“Use!” echoed Poole. “Do you not see, sir, it is broken? much as if a
man had stamped on it.”

“Ay,” continued Utterson, “and the fractures, too, are rusty.” The two
men looked at each other with a scare. “This is beyond me, Poole,” said
the lawyer. “Let us go back to the cabinet.”

They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an occasional
awe-struck glance at the dead body, proceeded more thoroughly to
examine the contents of the cabinet. At one table, there were traces of
chemical work, various measured heaps of some white salt being laid on
glass saucers, as though for an experiment in which the unhappy man had
been prevented.

“That is the same drug that I was always bringing him,” said Poole; and
even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise boiled over.

This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn
cosily up, and the tea-things stood ready to the sitter’s elbow, the
very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay
beside the tea-things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy
of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great
esteem, annotated, in his own hand, with startling blasphemies.

Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the searchers came
to the cheval glass, into whose depths they looked with an involuntary
horror. But it was so turned as to show them nothing but the rosy glow
playing on the roof, the fire sparkling in a hundred repetitions along
the glazed front of the presses, and their own pale and fearful
countenances stooping to look in.

“This glass have seen some strange things, sir,” whispered Poole.

“And surely none stranger than itself,” echoed the lawyer in the same
tones. “For what did Jekyll”—he caught himself up at the word with a
start, and then conquering the weakness—“what could Jekyll want with
it?” he said.

“You may say that!” said Poole. Next they turned to the business-table.
On the desk among the neat array of papers, a large envelope was
uppermost, and bore, in the doctor’s hand, the name of Mr. Utterson.
The lawyer unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor. The
first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he
had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of
death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but, in place of
the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable amazement, read
the name of Gabriel John Utterson. He looked at Poole, and then back at
the paper, and last of all at the dead malefactor stretched upon the
carpet.

“My head goes round,” he said. “He has been all these days in
possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see
himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document.”

He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the doctor’s hand
and dated at the top. “O Poole!” the lawyer cried, “he was alive and
here this day. He cannot have been disposed of in so short a space, he
must be still alive, he must have fled! And then, why fled? and how?
and in that case, can we venture to declare this suicide? Oh, we must
be careful. I foresee that we may yet involve your master in some dire
catastrophe.”

“Why don’t you read it, sir?” asked Poole.

“Because I fear,” replied the lawyer solemnly. “God grant I have no
cause for it!” And with that he brought the paper to his eyes and read
as follows:

“My dear Utterson,—When this shall fall into your hands, I shall have
disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the penetration to
foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances of my nameless
situation tell me that the end is sure and must be early. Go then, and
first read the narrative which Lanyon warned me he was to place in your
hands; and if you care to hear more, turn to the confession of

“Your unworthy and unhappy friend,
“HENRY JEKYLL.”

“There was a third enclosure?” asked Utterson.

“Here, sir,” said Poole, and gave into his hands a considerable packet
sealed in several places.

The lawyer put it in his pocket. “I would say nothing of this paper. If
your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save his credit. It is
now ten; I must go home and read these documents in quiet; but I shall
be back before midnight, when we shall send for the police.”

They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them; and
Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the fire in the
hall, trudged back to his office to read the two narratives in which
this mystery was now to be explained.

DR. LANYON’S NARRATIVE

On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the evening
delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of my colleague
and old school-companion, Henry Jekyll. I was a good deal surprised by
this; for we were by no means in the habit of correspondence; I had
seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the night before; and I could
imagine nothing in our intercourse that should justify formality of
registration. The contents increased my wonder; for this is how the
letter ran:

“10th December, 18——

“Dear Lanyon,—You are one of my oldest friends; and although we may
have differed at times on scientific questions, I cannot remember, at
least on my side, any break in our affection. There was never a day
when, if you had said to me, ‘Jekyll, my life, my honour, my reason,
depend upon you,’ I would not have sacrificed my left hand to help you.
Lanyon, my life, my honour my reason, are all at your mercy; if you
fail me to-night I am lost. You might suppose, after this preface, that
I am going to ask you for something dishonourable to grant. Judge for
yourself.

“I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night—ay, even if
you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to take a cab, unless
your carriage should be actually at the door; and with this letter in
your hand for consultation, to drive straight to my house. Poole, my
butler, has his orders; you will find, him waiting your arrival with a
locksmith. The door of my cabinet is then to be forced: and you are to
go in alone; to open the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand,
breaking the lock if it be shut; and to draw out, _with all its
contents as they stand_, the fourth drawer from the top or (which is
the same thing) the third from the bottom. In my extreme distress of
wind, I have a morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in
error, you may know the right drawer by its contents: some powders, a
phial and a paper book. This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you
to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.

“That is the first part of the service: now for the second. You should
be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this, long before
midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin, not only in the
fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be prevented nor
foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are in bed is to be
preferred for what will then remain to do. At midnight, then, I have to
ask you to be alone in your consulting-room, to admit with your own
hand into the house a man who will present himself in my name, and to
place in his hands the drawer that you will have brought with you from
my cabinet. Then you will have played your part and earned my gratitude
completely. Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation,
you will have understood that these arrangements are of capital
importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as they
must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my death or
the shipwreck of my reason.

“Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal, my heart
sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a possibility.
Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a
blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware
that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away
like a story that is told. Serve me, my dear Lanyon, and save

“Your friend,
“H. J.

“P. S. I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror struck upon my
soul. It is possible that the postoffice may fail me, and this letter
not come into your hands until to-morrow morning. In that case, dear
Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be most convenient for you in the
course of the day; and once more expect my messenger at midnight. It
may then already be too late; and if that night passes without event,
you will know that you have seen the last of Henry Jekyll.”

Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was insane;
but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt, I felt bound
to do as he requested. The less I understood of this farrago, the less
I was in a position to judge of its importance; and an appeal so worded
could not be set aside without a grave responsibility. I rose
accordingly from table, got into a hansom, and drove straight to
Jekyll’s house. The butler was awaiting my arrival; he had received by
the same post as mine a registered letter of instruction, and had sent
at once for a locksmith and a carpenter. The tradesmen came while we
were yet speaking; and we moved in a body to old Dr. Denman’s surgical
theatre, from which (as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll’s private
cabinet is most conveniently entered. The door was very strong, the
lock excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and
have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the locksmith was
near despair. But this last was a handy fellow, and after two hours’
work, the door stood open. The press marked E was unlocked; and I took
out the drawer, had it filled up with straw and tied in a sheet, and
returned with it to Cavendish Square.

Here I proceeded to examine its contents. The powders were neatly
enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing chemist; so
that it was plain they were of Jekyll’s private manufacture; and when I
opened one of the wrappers I found what seemed to me a simple
crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned
my attention, might have been about half-full of a blood-red liquor,
which was highly pungent to the sense of smell and seemed to me to
contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I
could make no guess. The book was an ordinary version-book and
contained little but a series of dates. These covered a period of many
years, but I observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and
quite abruptly. Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date,
usually no more than a single word: “double” occurring perhaps six
times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early in the
list and followed by several marks of exclamation, “total failure!!!”
All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me little that was
definite. Here were a phial of some tincture, a paper of some salt, and
the record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many of
Jekyll’s investigations) to no end of practical usefulness. How could
the presence of these articles in my house affect either the honour,
the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague? If his messenger could
go to one place, why could he not go to another? And even granting some
impediment, why was this gentleman to be received by me in secret? The
more I reflected the more convinced I grew that I was dealing with a
case of cerebral disease: and though I dismissed my servants to bed, I
loaded an old revolver, that I might be found in some posture of
self-defence.

Twelve o’clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the knocker sounded
very gently on the door. I went myself at the summons, and found a
small man crouching against the pillars of the portico.

“Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?” I asked.

He told me “yes” by a constrained gesture; and when I had bidden him
enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward glance into the
darkness of the square. There was a policeman not far off, advancing
with his bull’s eye open; and at the sight, I thought my visitor
started and made greater haste.

These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I followed
him into the bright light of the consulting-room, I kept my hand ready
on my weapon. Here, at last, I had a chance of clearly seeing him. I
had never set eyes on him before, so much was certain. He was small, as
I have said; I was struck besides with the shocking expression of his
face, with his remarkable combination of great muscular activity and
great apparent debility of constitution, and—last but not least— with
the odd, subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood. This bore
some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a marked
sinking of the pulse. At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic,
personal distaste, and merely wondered at the acuteness of the
symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much
deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on some nobler hinge than the
principle of hatred.

This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance,
struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was
dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable;
his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober
fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the
trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the
ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar
sprawling wide upon his shoulders. Strange to relate, this ludicrous
accoutrement was far from moving me to laughter. Rather, as there was
something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature
that now faced me— something seizing, surprising, and revolting—this
fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce it; so that
to my interest in the man’s nature and character, there was added a
curiosity as to his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the
world.

These observations, though they have taken so great a space to be set
down in, were yet the work of a few seconds. My visitor was, indeed, on
fire with sombre excitement.

“Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his
impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake
me.

I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my
blood. “Come, sir,” said I. “You forget that I have not yet the
pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.” And I showed
him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as
fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness
of the hour, the nature of my pre-occupations, and the horror I had of
my visitor, would suffer me to muster.

“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “What you
say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown its heels to my
politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry
Jekyll, on a piece of business of some moment; and I understood…” He
paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his
collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the
hysteria—“I understood, a drawer…”

But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and some perhaps on my
own growing curiosity.

“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the
floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.

He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: I
could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and
his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life
and reason.

“Compose yourself,” said I.

He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of
despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered
one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next
moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, “Have
you a graduated glass?” he asked.

I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he
asked.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red
tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first
of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to
brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes
of vapour. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and
the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to
a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a
keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned
and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

“And now,” said he, “to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you
be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go
forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of
curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it
shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you
were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service
rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches
of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of
knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you,
here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted
by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan.”

“Sir,” said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly
possessing, “you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I
hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too
far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end.”

“It is well,” replied my visitor. “Lanyon, you remember your vows: what
follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so
long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have
denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your
superiors— behold!”

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he
reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with
injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I
thought, a change—he seemed to swell— his face became suddenly black
and the features seemed to melt and alter—and the next moment, I had
sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to
shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my
eyes—pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with
his hands, like a man restored from death— there stood Henry Jekyll!

What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on
paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at
it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if
I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots;
sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the
day and night; I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die;
and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man
unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory,
dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say but one thing,
Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be
more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was,
on Jekyll’s own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in
every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.

HASTIE LANYON

HENRY JEKYLL’S FULL STATEMENT OF THE CASE

I was born in the year 18—— to a large fortune, endowed besides with
excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of
the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been
supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished
future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient
gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such
as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my
head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the
public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that
when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take
stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already
committed to a profound duplicity of life. Many a man would have even
blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high
views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost
morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the exacting nature of my
aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me
what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men,
severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound
man’s dual nature. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and
inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of
religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress. Though
so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides
of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside
restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of
day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and
suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies,
which led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental, re-acted and
shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my
members. With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the
moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth,
by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful
shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because
the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others
will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard
the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of
multifarious, incongruous, and independent denizens. I, for my part,
from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in one direction and in
one direction only. It was on the moral side, and in my own person,
that I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man;
I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my
consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was
only because I was radically both; and from an early date, even before
the course of my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most
naked possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with
pleasure, as a beloved day-dream, on the thought of the separation of
these elements. If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate
identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the
unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of
his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely
on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his
pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands
of this extraneous evil. It was the curse of mankind that these
incongruous fagots were thus bound together that in the agonised womb
of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling.
How, then, were they dissociated?

I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side-light began
to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table. I began to
perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated, the trembling
immateriality, the mist-like transience of this seemingly so solid body
in which we walk attired. Certain agents I found to have the power to
shake and to pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might
toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter
deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I
have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our life is bound
for ever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it
off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful
pressure. Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too
evident, my discoveries were incomplete. Enough, then, that I not only
recognised my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain
of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by
which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a
second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me
because they were the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements
in my soul.

I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of practice. I
knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so potently controlled
and shook the very fortress of identity, might by the least scruple of
an overdose or at the least inopportunity in the moment of exhibition,
utterly blot out that immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to
change. But the temptation of a discovery so singular and profound, at
last overcame the suggestions of alarm. I had long since prepared my
tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists, a
large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my experiments,
to be the last ingredient required; and late one accursed night, I
compounded the elements, watched them boil and smoke together in the
glass, and when the ebullition had subsided, with a strong glow of
courage, drank off the potion.

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly
nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour
of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I
came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something
strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its
very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in
body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of
disordered sensual images running like a mill-race in my fancy, a
solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent
freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new
life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my
original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me
like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these
sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in
stature.

There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which stands beside
me as I write, was brought there later on and for the very purpose of
these transformations. The night, however, was far gone into the
morning—the morning, black as it was, was nearly ripe for the
conception of the day—the inmates of my house were locked in the most
rigorous hours of slumber; and I determined, flushed as I was with hope
and triumph, to venture in my new shape as far as to my bedroom. I
crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I
could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that
their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through
the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw
for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I know, but
that which I suppose to be most probable. The evil side of my nature,
to which I had now transferred the stamping efficacy, was less robust
and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in
the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine-tenths a life of
effort, virtue, and control, it had been much less exercised and much
less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde
was so much smaller, slighter, and younger than Henry Jekyll. Even as
good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly
and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still
believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint
of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in
the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of
welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human. In my eyes
it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and
single, than the imperfect and divided countenance I had been hitherto
accustomed to call mine. And in so far I was doubtless right. I have
observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come
near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the flesh. This, as
I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are
commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of
mankind, was pure evil.

I lingered but a moment at the mirror: the second and conclusive
experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to be seen if I had
lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a
house that was no longer mine; and hurrying back to my cabinet, I once
more prepared and drank the cup, once more suffered the pangs of
dissolution, and came to myself once more with the character, the
stature, and the face of Henry Jekyll.

That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads. Had I approached my
discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the experiment while
under the empire of generous or pious aspirations, all must have been
otherwise, and from these agonies of death and birth, I had come forth
an angel instead of a fiend. The drug had no discriminating action; it
was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the
prison-house of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that
which stood within ran forth. At that time my virtue slumbered; my
evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the
occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde. Hence,
although I had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was
wholly evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that
incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had already
learned to despair. The movement was thus wholly toward the worse.

Even at that time, I had not yet conquered my aversion to the dryness
of a life of study. I would still be merrily disposed at times; and as
my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified, and I was not only
well known and highly considered, but growing toward the elderly man,
this incoherency of my life was daily growing more unwelcome. It was on
this side that my new power tempted me until I fell in slavery. I had
but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor,
and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the
notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and I made my
preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that
house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as
housekeeper a creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous.
On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I
described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the
square; and to parry mishaps, I even called and made myself a familiar
object, in my second character. I next drew up that will to which you
so much objected; so that if anything befell me in the person of Dr.
Jekyll, I could enter on that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss.
And thus fortified, as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by
the strange immunities of my position.

Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own
person and reputation sat under shelter. I was the first that ever did
so for his pleasures. I was the first that could thus plod in the
public eye with a load of genial respectability, and in a moment, like
a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea
of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was
complete. Think of it—I did not even exist! Let me but escape into my
laboratory door, give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the
draught that I had always standing ready; and whatever he had done,
Edward Hyde would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and
there in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his
study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be Henry
Jekyll.

The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have
said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands
of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I
would come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind
of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of
my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being
inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on
self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture
to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times
aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was apart from
ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of conscience. It was
Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse;
he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even
make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And
thus his conscience slumbered.

Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for even now I
can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design of entering; I
mean but to point out the warnings and the successive steps with which
my chastisement approached. I met with one accident which, as it
brought on no consequence, I shall no more than mention. An act of
cruelty to a child aroused against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I
recognised the other day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and
the child’s family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my
life; and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward
Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn in
the name of Henry Jekyll. But this danger was easily eliminated from
the future, by opening an account at another bank in the name of Edward
Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own hand backward, I had supplied
my double with a signature, I thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.

Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been out for
one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and woke the next
day in bed with somewhat odd sensations. It was in vain I looked about
me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and tall proportions of my room
in the square; in vain that I recognised the pattern of the
bed-curtains and the design of the mahogany frame; something still kept
insisting that I was not where I was, that I had not wakened where I
seemed to be, but in the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to
sleep in the body of Edward Hyde. I smiled to myself, and, in my
psychological way began lazily to inquire into the elements of this
illusion, occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a
comfortable morning doze. I was still so engaged when, in one of my
more wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand. Now the hand of Henry
Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and size:
it was large, firm, white, and comely. But the hand which I now saw,
clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half
shut on the bed-clothes, was lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor
and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair. It was the hand of
Edward Hyde.

I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I was in the
mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my breast as sudden
and startling as the crash of cymbals; and bounding from my bed, I
rushed to the mirror. At the sight that met my eyes, my blood was
changed into something exquisitely thin and icy. Yes, I had gone to bed
Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained?
I asked myself, and then, with another bound of terror—how was it to be
remedied? It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my
drugs were in the cabinet—a long journey down two pairs of stairs,
through the back passage, across the open court and through the
anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck. It
might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was that,
when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature? And then
with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back upon my mind
that the servants were already used to the coming and going of my
second self. I had soon dressed, as well as I was able, in clothes of
my own size: had soon passed through the house, where Bradshaw stared
and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at such an hour and in such a strange
array; and ten minutes later, Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape
and was sitting down, with a darkened brow, to make a feint of
breakfasting.

Small indeed was my appetite. This inexplicable incident, this reversal
of my previous experience, seemed, like the Babylonian finger on the
wall, to be spelling out the letters of my judgment; and I began to
reflect more seriously than ever before on the issues and possibilities
of my double existence. That part of me which I had the power of
projecting, had lately been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed
to me of late as though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature,
as though (when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous
tide of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much
prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown,
the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward
Hyde become irrevocably mine. The power of the drug had not been always
equally displayed. Once, very early in my career, it had totally failed
me; since then I had been obliged on more than one occasion to double,
and once, with infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these
rare uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment.
Now, however, and in the light of that morning’s accident, I was led to
remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had been to throw
off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but decidedly
transferred itself to the other side. All things therefore seemed to
point to this: that I was slowly losing hold of my original and better
self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.

Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had
memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared
between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive
apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the
pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll,
or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in
which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father’s
interest; Hyde had more than a son’s indifference. To cast in my lot
with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly
indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was
to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a
blow and for ever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear
unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales; for
while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde
would be not even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my
circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace
as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any
tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with
so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was
found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by
friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to
the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses
and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I
made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I
neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward
Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet. For two months, however, I
was true to my determination; for two months I led a life of such
severity as I had never before attained to, and enjoyed the
compensations of an approving conscience. But time began at last to
obliterate the freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began
to grow into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and
longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an hour
of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the
transforming draught.

I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself upon his
vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by the dangers that
he runs through his brutish, physical insensibility; neither had I,
long as I had considered my position, made enough allowance for the
complete moral insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which
were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I
was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was
conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more
furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that
stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to
the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God,
no man morally sane could have been guilty of that crime upon so
pitiful a provocation; and that I struck in no more reasonable spirit
than that in which a sick child may break a plaything. But I had
voluntarily stripped myself of all those balancing instincts by which
even the worst of us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness
among temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was
to fall.

Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. With a transport of
glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow;
and it was not till weariness had begun to succeed, that I was
suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium, struck through the heart by a
cold thrill of terror. A mist dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit;
and fled from the scene of these excesses, at once glorying and
trembling, my lust of evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life
screwed to the topmost peg. I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make
assurance doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through
the lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on
my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet still
hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of the avenger.
Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the draught, and as he
drank it, pledged the dead man. The pangs of transformation had not
done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of
gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped
hands to God. The veil of self-indulgence was rent from head to foot, I
saw my life as a whole: I followed it up from the days of childhood,
when I had walked with my father’s hand, and through the self-denying
toils of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same
sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening. I could have
screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to smother down the
crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my memory swarmed against
me; and still, between the petitions, the ugly face of my iniquity
stared into my soul. As the acuteness of this remorse began to die
away, it was succeeded by a sense of joy. The problem of my conduct was
solved. Hyde was thenceforth impossible; whether I would or not, I was
now confined to the better part of my existence; and oh, how I rejoiced
to think it! with what willing humility, I embraced anew the
restrictions of natural life! with what sincere renunciation, I locked
the door by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key
under my heel!

The next day, came the news that the murder not had been overlooked,
that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and that the victim was
a man high in public estimation. It was not only a crime, it had been a
tragic folly. I think I was glad to know it; I think I was glad to have
my better impulses thus buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the
scaffold. Jekyll was now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an
instant, and the hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.

I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can say with
honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. You know yourself
how earnestly in the last months of last year, I laboured to relieve
suffering; you know that much was done for others, and that the days
passed quietly, almost happily for myself. Nor can I truly say that I
wearied of this beneficent and innocent life; I think instead that I
daily enjoyed it more completely; but I was still cursed with my
duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the
lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to
growl for licence. Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare
idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person,
that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was
as an ordinary secret sinner, that I at last fell before the assaults
of temptation.

There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure is filled
at last; and this brief condescension to evil finally destroyed the
balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural,
like a return to the old days before I had made discovery. It was a
fine, clear, January day, wet under foot where the frost had melted,
but cloudless overhead; and the Regent’s Park was full of winter
chirrupings and sweet with spring odours. I sat in the sun on a bench;
the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a
little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to
begin. After all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I
smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill
with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. And at the very moment of that
vain-glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the
most deadly shuddering. These passed away, and left me faint; and then
as in its turn the faintness subsided, I began to be aware of a change
in the temper of my thoughts, a greater boldness, a contempt of danger,
a solution of the bonds of obligation. I looked down; my clothes hung
formlessly on my shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was
corded and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had
been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth laying for
me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of
mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows.

My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly. I have more than
once observed that, in my second character, my faculties seemed
sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic; thus it came
about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have succumbed, Hyde rose to the
importance of the moment. My drugs were in one of the presses of my
cabinet; how was I to reach them? That was the problem that (crushing
my temples in my hands) I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I
had closed. If I sought to enter by the house, my own servants would
consign me to the gallows. I saw I must employ another hand, and
thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached? how persuaded? Supposing
that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into
his presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor,
prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his colleague,
Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character, one part
remained to me: I could write my own hand; and once I had conceived
that kindling spark, the way that I must follow became lighted up from
end to end.

Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and summoning a
passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which
I chanced to remember. At my appearance (which was indeed comical
enough, however tragic a fate these garments covered) the driver could
not conceal his mirth. I gnashed my teeth upon him with a gust of
devilish fury; and the smile withered from his face—happily for him—yet
more happily for myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged
him from his perch. At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so
black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they
exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a
private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of
his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung
to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was
astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his
two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he
might receive actual evidence of their being posted, sent them out with
directions that they should be registered.

Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room,
gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the
waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was
fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven
to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say—I cannot say, I.
That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and
hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow
suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his
misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the
midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within
him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to
himself, skulking through the less-frequented thoroughfares, counting
the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to
him, offering, I think, a box of lights. He smote her in the face, and
she fled.

When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend perhaps
affected me somewhat: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the
sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon these hours. A
change had come over me. It was no longer the fear of the gallows, it
was the horror of being Hyde that racked me. I received Lanyon’s
condemnation partly in a dream; it was partly in a dream that I came
home to my own house and got into bed. I slept after the prostration of
the day, with a stringent and profound slumber which not even the
nightmares that wrung me could avail to break. I awoke in the morning
shaken, weakened, but refreshed. I still hated and feared the thought
of the brute that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten
the appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home,
in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape
shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness of
hope.

I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast, drinking the
chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized again with those
indescribable sensations that heralded the change; and I had but the
time to gain the shelter of my cabinet, before I was once again raging
and freezing with the passions of Hyde. It took on this occasion a
double dose to recall me to myself; and alas! Six hours after, as I sat
looking sadly in the fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be
re-administered. In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a
great effort as of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation
of the drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll. At all
hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory
shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my chair,
it was always as Hyde that I awakened. Under the strain of this
continually-impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now
condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I
became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever,
languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one
thought: the horror of my other self. But when I slept, or when the
virtue of the medicine wore off, I would leap almost without transition
(for the pangs of transformation grew daily less marked) into the
possession of a fancy brimming with images of terror, a soul boiling
with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to
contain the raging energies of life. The powers of Hyde seemed to have
grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. And certainly the hate that now
divided them was equal on each side. With Jekyll, it was a thing of
vital instinct. He had now seen the full deformity of that creature
that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and was
co-heir with him to death: and beyond these links of community, which
in themselves made the most poignant part of his distress, he thought
of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish
but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit
seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated
and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the
offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to
him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh,
where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every
hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against
him and deposed him out of life. The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll, was of
a different order. His terror of the gallows drove him continually to
commit temporary suicide, and return to his subordinate station of a
part instead of a person; but he loathed the necessity, he loathed the
despondency into which Jekyll was now fallen, and he resented the
dislike with which he was himself regarded. Hence the ape-like tricks
that he would play me, scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the
pages of my books, burning the letters and destroying the portrait of
my father; and indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would
long ago have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin. But
his love of life is wonderful; I go further: I, who sicken and freeze
at the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion of
this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut him off
by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.

It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this
description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice;
and yet even to these, habit brought—no, not alleviation—but a certain
callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my
punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity
which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face
and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed
since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out
for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and
the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was
without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London
ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply
was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy
to the draught.

About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement under
the influence of the last of the old powders. This, then, is the last
time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think his own thoughts
or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in the glass. Nor must I
delay too long to bring my writing to an end; for if my narrative has
hitherto escaped destruction, it has been by a combination of great
prudence and great good luck. Should the throes of change take me in
the act of writing it, Hyde will tear it in pieces; but if some time
shall have elapsed after I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness
and Circumscription to the moment will probably save it once again from
the action of his ape-like spite. And indeed the doom that is closing
on us both, has already changed and crushed him. Half an hour from now,
when I shall again and for ever re-indue that hated personality, I know
how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with
the most strained and fear-struck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and
down this room (my last earthly refuge) and give ear to every sound of
menace. Will Hyde die upon the scaffold? or will he find courage to
release himself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is
my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than
myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my
confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

The “Ballade” took ten minutes, which was five minutes too long. The
audience grew restive and fell to whispering. Thea could hear Mrs.
Livery Johnson’s bracelets jangling as she fanned herself, and she
could hear her father’s nervous, ministerial cough. Thor behaved better
than any one else. When Thea bowed and returned to her seat at the back
of the stage there was the usual applause, but it was vigorous only
from the back of the house where the Mexicans sat, and from Ray
Kennedy’s _claqueurs_. Any one could see that a good-natured audience
had been bored.

Because Mr. Kronborg’s sister was on the programme, it had also been
necessary to ask the Baptist preacher’s wife’s cousin to sing. She was
a “deep alto” from McCook, and she sang, “Thy Sentinel Am I.” After her
came Lily Fisher. Thea’s rival was also a blonde, but her hair was much
heavier than Thea’s, and fell in long round curls over her shoulders.
She was the angel-child of the Baptists, and looked exactly like the
beautiful children on soap calendars. Her pink-and-white face, her set
smile of innocence, were surely born of a color-press. She had long,
drooping eyelashes, a little pursed-up mouth, and narrow, pointed
teeth, like a squirrel’s.

Lily began:—

“_Rock of Ages, cleft for me_, carelessly the maiden sang.”

Thea drew a long breath. That was the game; it was a recitation and a
song in one. Lily trailed the hymn through half a dozen verses with
great effect. The Baptist preacher had announced at the beginning of
the concert that “owing to the length of the programme, there would be
no encores.” But the applause which followed Lily to her seat was such
an unmistakable expression of enthusiasm that Thea had to admit Lily
was justified in going back. She was attended this time by Mrs. Livery
Johnson herself, crimson with triumph and gleaming-eyed, nervously
rolling and unrolling a sheet of music. She took off her bracelets and
played Lily’s accompaniment. Lily had the effrontery to come out with,
“She sang the song of Home, Sweet Home, the song that touched my
heart.” But this did not surprise Thea; as Ray said later in the
evening, “the cards had been stacked against her from the beginning.”
The next issue of the _Gleam_ correctly stated that “unquestionably the
honors of the evening must be accorded to Miss Lily Fisher.” The
Baptists had everything their own way.

After the concert Ray Kennedy joined the Kronborgs’ party and walked
home with them. Thea was grateful for his silent sympathy, even while
it irritated her. She inwardly vowed that she would never take another
lesson from old Wunsch. She wished that her father would not keep
cheerfully singing, “When Shepherds Watched,” as he marched ahead,
carrying Thor. She felt that silence would become the Kronborgs for a
while. As a family, they somehow seemed a little ridiculous, trooping
along in the starlight. There were so many of them, for one thing. Then
Tillie was so absurd. She was giggling and talking to Anna just as if
she had not made, as even Mrs. Kronborg admitted, an exhibition of
herself.

When they got home, Ray took a box from his overcoat pocket and slipped
it into Thea’s hand as he said goodnight. They all hurried in to the
glowing stove in the parlor. The sleepy children were sent to bed. Mrs.
Kronborg and Anna stayed up to fill the stockings.

“I guess you’re tired, Thea. You needn’t stay up.” Mrs. Kronborg’s
clear and seemingly indifferent eye usually measured Thea pretty
accurately.

Thea hesitated. She glanced at the presents laid out on the dining-room
table, but they looked unattractive. Even the brown plush monkey she
had bought for Thor with such enthusiasm seemed to have lost his wise
and humorous expression. She murmured, “All right,” to her mother, lit
her lantern, and went upstairs.

Ray’s box contained a hand-painted white satin fan, with pond lilies—an
unfortunate reminder. Thea smiled grimly and tossed it into her upper
drawer. She was not to be consoled by toys. She undressed quickly and
stood for some time in the cold, frowning in the broken looking glass
at her flaxen pig-tails, at her white neck and arms. Her own broad,
resolute face set its chin at her, her eyes flashed into her own
defiantly. Lily Fisher was pretty, and she was willing to be just as
big a fool as people wanted her to be. Very well; Thea Kronborg wasn’t.
She would rather be hated than be stupid, any day. She popped into bed
and read stubbornly at a queer paper book the drug-store man had given
her because he couldn’t sell it. She had trained herself to put her
mind on what she was doing, otherwise she would have come to grief with
her complicated daily schedule. She read, as intently as if she had not
been flushed with anger, the strange “Musical Memories” of the Reverend
H. R. Haweis. At last she blew out the lantern and went to sleep. She
had many curious dreams that night. In one of them Mrs. Tellamantez
held her shell to Thea’s ear, and she heard the roaring, as before, and
distant voices calling, “Lily Fisher! Lily Fisher!”

IX

Mr. Kronborg considered Thea a remarkable child; but so were all his
children remarkable. If one of the business men downtown remarked to
him that he “had a mighty bright little girl, there,” he admitted it,
and at once began to explain what a “long head for business” his son
Gus had, or that Charley was “a natural electrician,” and had put in a
telephone from the house to the preacher’s study behind the church.

Mrs. Kronborg watched her daughter thoughtfully. She found her more
interesting than her other children, and she took her more seriously,
without thinking much about why she did so. The other children had to
be guided, directed, kept from conflicting with one another. Charley
and Gus were likely to want the same thing, and to quarrel about it.
Anna often demanded unreasonable service from her older brothers; that
they should sit up until after midnight to bring her home from parties
when she did not like the youth who had offered himself as her escort;
or that they should drive twelve miles into the country, on a winter
night, to take her to a ranch dance, after they had been working hard
all day. Gunner often got bored with his own clothes or stilts or sled,
and wanted Axel’s. But Thea, from the time she was a little thing, had
her own routine. She kept out of every one’s way, and was hard to
manage only when the other children interfered with her. Then there was
trouble indeed: bursts of temper which used to alarm Mrs. Kronborg.
“You ought to know enough to let Thea alone. She lets you alone,” she
often said to the other children.

One may have staunch friends in one’s own family, but one seldom has
admirers. Thea, however, had one in the person of her addle-pated aunt,
Tillie Kronborg. In older countries, where dress and opinions and
manners are not so thoroughly standardized as in our own West, there is
a belief that people who are foolish about the more obvious things of
life are apt to have peculiar insight into what lies beyond the
obvious. The old woman who can never learn not to put the kerosene can
on the stove, may yet be able to tell fortunes, to persuade a backward
child to grow, to cure warts, or to tell people what to do with a young
girl who has gone melancholy. Tillie’s mind was a curious machine; when
she was awake it went round like a wheel when the belt has slipped off,
and when she was asleep she dreamed follies. But she had intuitions.
She knew, for instance, that Thea was different from the other
Kronborgs, worthy though they all were. Her romantic imagination found
possibilities in her niece. When she was sweeping or ironing, or
turning the ice-cream freezer at a furious rate, she often built up
brilliant futures for Thea, adapting freely the latest novel she had
read.

Tillie made enemies for her niece among the church people because, at
sewing societies and church suppers, she sometimes spoke vauntingly,
with a toss of her head, just as if Thea’s “wonderfulness” were an
accepted fact in Moonstone, like Mrs. Archie’s stinginess, or Mrs.
Livery Johnson’s duplicity. People declared that, on this subject,
Tillie made them tired.

Tillie belonged to a dramatic club that once a year performed in the
Moonstone Opera House such plays as “Among the Breakers,” and “The
Veteran of 1812.” Tillie played character parts, the flirtatious old
maid or the spiteful _intrigante_. She used to study her parts up in
the attic at home. While she was committing the lines, she got Gunner
or Anna to hold the book for her, but when she began “to bring out the
expression,” as she said, she used, very timorously, to ask Thea to
hold the book. Thea was usually—not always—agreeable about it. Her
mother had told her that, since she had some influence with Tillie, it
would be a good thing for them all if she could tone her down a shade
and “keep her from taking on any worse than need be.” Thea would sit on
the foot of Tillie’s bed, her feet tucked under her, and stare at the
silly text. “I wouldn’t make so much fuss, there, Tillie,” she would
remark occasionally; “I don’t see the point in it”; or, “What do you
pitch your voice so high for? It don’t carry half as well.”

“I don’t see how it comes Thea is so patient with Tillie,” Mrs.
Kronborg more than once remarked to her husband. “She ain’t patient
with most people, but it seems like she’s got a peculiar patience for
Tillie.”

Tillie always coaxed Thea to go “behind the scenes” with her when the
club presented a play, and help her with her make-up. Thea hated it,
but she always went. She felt as if she had to do it. There was
something in Tillie’s adoration of her that compelled her. There was no
family impropriety that Thea was so much ashamed of as Tillie’s
“acting” and yet she was always being dragged in to assist her. Tillie
simply had her, there. She didn’t know why, but it was so. There was a
string in her somewhere that Tillie could pull; a sense of obligation
to Tillie’s misguided aspirations. The saloon-keepers had some such
feeling of responsibility toward Spanish Johnny.

The dramatic club was the pride of Tillie’s heart, and her enthusiasm
was the principal factor in keeping it together. Sick or well, Tillie
always attended rehearsals, and was always urging the young people, who
took rehearsals lightly, to “stop fooling and begin now.” The young
men—bank clerks, grocery clerks, insurance agents—played tricks,
laughed at Tillie, and “put it up on each other” about seeing her home;
but they often went to tiresome rehearsals just to oblige her. They
were good-natured young fellows. Their trainer and stage-manager was
young Upping, the jeweler who ordered Thea’s music for her.

Though barely thirty, he had followed half a dozen professions, and had
once been a violinist in the orchestra of the Andrews Opera Company,
then well known in little towns throughout Colorado and Nebraska.

By one amazing indiscretion Tillie very nearly lost her hold upon the
Moonstone Drama Club. The club had decided to put on “The Drummer Boy
of Shiloh,” a very ambitious undertaking because of the many supers
needed and the scenic difficulties of the act which took place in
Andersonville Prison. The members of the club consulted together in
Tillie’s absence as to who should play the part of the drummer boy. It
must be taken by a very young person, and village boys of that age are
self-conscious and are not apt at memorizing. The part was a long one,
and clearly it must be given to a girl. Some members of the club
suggested Thea Kronborg, others advocated Lily Fisher. Lily’s partisans
urged that she was much prettier than Thea, and had a much “sweeter
disposition.” Nobody denied these facts. But there was nothing in the
least boyish about Lily, and she sang all songs and played all parts
alike. Lily’s simper was popular, but it seemed not quite the right
thing for the heroic drummer boy.

Upping, the trainer, talked to one and another: “Lily’s all right for
girl parts,” he insisted, “but you’ve got to get a girl with some
ginger in her for this. Thea’s got the voice, too. When she sings,
‘Just Before the Battle, Mother,’ she’ll bring down the house.”

When all the members of the club had been privately consulted, they
announced their decision to Tillie at the first regular meeting that
was called to cast the parts. They expected Tillie to be overcome with
joy, but, on the contrary, she seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid Thea
hasn’t got time for that,” she said jerkily. “She is always so busy
with her music. Guess you’ll have to get somebody else.”

The club lifted its eyebrows. Several of Lily Fisher’s friends coughed.
Mr. Upping flushed. The stout woman who always played the injured wife
called Tillie’s attention to the fact that this would be a fine
opportunity for her niece to show what she could do. Her tone was
condescending.

Tillie threw up her head and laughed; there was something sharp and
wild about Tillie’s laugh—when it was not a giggle. “Oh, I guess Thea
hasn’t got time to do any showing off. Her time to show off ain’t come
yet. I expect she’ll make us all sit up when it does. No use asking her
to take the part. She’d turn her nose up at it. I guess they’d be glad
to get her in the Denver Dramatics, if they could.”

The company broke up into groups and expressed their amazement. Of
course all Swedes were conceited, but they would never have believed
that all the conceit of all the Swedes put together would reach such a
pitch as this. They confided to each other that Tillie was “just a
little off, on the subject of her niece,” and agreed that it would be
as well not to excite her further. Tillie got a cold reception at
rehearsals for a long while afterward, and Thea had a crop of new
enemies without even knowing it.

X

Wunsch and old Fritz and Spanish Johnny celebrated Christmas together,
so riotously that Wunsch was unable to give Thea her lesson the next
day. In the middle of the vacation week Thea went to the Kohlers’
through a soft, beautiful snowstorm. The air was a tender blue-gray,
like the color on the doves that flew in and out of the white
dove-house on the post in the Kohlers’ garden. The sand hills looked
dim and sleepy. The tamarisk hedge was full of snow, like a foam of
blossoms drifted over it. When Thea opened the gate, old Mrs. Kohler
was just coming in from the chicken yard, with five fresh eggs in her
apron and a pair of old top-boots on her feet. She called Thea to come
and look at a bantam egg, which she held up proudly. Her bantam hens
were remiss in zeal, and she was always delighted when they
accomplished anything. She took Thea into the sitting-room, very warm
and smelling of food, and brought her a plateful of little Christmas
cakes, made according to old and hallowed formulae, and put them before
her while she warmed her feet. Then she went to the door of the kitchen
stairs and called: “Herr Wunsch, Herr Wunsch!”

Wunsch came down wearing an old wadded jacket, with a velvet collar.
The brown silk was so worn that the wadding stuck out almost
everywhere. He avoided Thea’s eyes when he came in, nodded without
speaking, and pointed directly to the piano stool. He was not so
insistent upon the scales as usual, and throughout the little sonata of
Mozart’s she was studying, he remained languid and absent-minded. His
eyes looked very heavy, and he kept wiping them with one of the new
silk handkerchiefs Mrs. Kohler had given him for Christmas. When the
lesson was over he did not seem inclined to talk. Thea, loitering on
the stool, reached for a tattered book she had taken off the music-rest
when she sat down. It was a very old Leipsic edition of the piano score
of Gluck’s “Orpheus.” She turned over the pages curiously.

“Is it nice?” she asked.

“It is the most beautiful opera ever made,” Wunsch declared solemnly.
“You know the story, eh? How, when she die, Orpheus went down below for
his wife?”

“Oh, yes, I know. I didn’t know there was an opera about it, though. Do
people sing this now?”

“_Aber ja!_ What else? You like to try? See.” He drew her from the
stool and sat down at the piano. Turning over the leaves to the third
act, he handed the score to Thea. “Listen, I play it through and you
get the _rhythmus. Eins, zwei, drei, vier_.” He played through Orpheus’
lament, then pushed back his cuffs with awakening interest and nodded
at Thea. “Now, _vom blatt, mit mir_.”

“Ach, ich habe sie verloren,
All’ mein Glück ist nun dahin.”

Wunsch sang the aria with much feeling. It was evidently one that was
very dear to him.

“_Noch einmal_, alone, yourself.” He played the introductory measures,
then nodded at her vehemently, and she began:—

“Ach, ich habe sie verloren.”

When she finished, Wunsch nodded again. “_Schön_,” he muttered as he
finished the accompaniment softly. He dropped his hands on his knees
and looked up at Thea. “That is very fine, eh? There is no such
beautiful melody in the world. You can take the book for one week and
learn something, to pass the time. It is good to know—always.
_Euridice, Eu—ri—di—ce, weh dass ich auf Erden bin!_” he sang softly,
playing the melody with his right hand.

Thea, who was turning over the pages of the third act, stopped and
scowled at a passage. The old German’s blurred eyes watched her
curiously.

“For what do you look so, _immer?_” puckering up his own face. “You see
something a little difficult, may-be, and you make such a face like it
was an enemy.”

Thea laughed, disconcerted. “Well, difficult things are enemies, aren’t
they? When you have to get them?”

Wunsch lowered his head and threw it up as if he were butting
something. “Not at all! By no means.” He took the book from her and
looked at it. “Yes, that is not so easy, there. This is an old book.
They do not print it so now any more, I think. They leave it out,
may-be. Only one woman could sing that good.”

Thea looked at him in perplexity.

Wunsch went on. “It is written for alto, you see. A woman sings the
part, and there was only one to sing that good in there. You
understand? Only one!” He glanced at her quickly and lifted his red
forefinger upright before her eyes.

Thea looked at the finger as if she were hypnotized. “Only one?” she
asked breathlessly; her hands, hanging at her sides, were opening and
shutting rapidly.

Wunsch nodded and still held up that compelling finger. When he dropped
his hands, there was a look of satisfaction in his face.

“Was she very great?”

Wunsch nodded.

“Was she beautiful?”

“_Aber gar nicht!_ Not at all. She was ugly; big mouth, big teeth, no
figure, nothing at all,” indicating a luxuriant bosom by sweeping his
hands over his chest. “A pole, a post! But for the voice—_ach!_ She
have something in there, behind the eyes,” tapping his temples.

Thea followed all his gesticulations intently. “Was she German?”

“No, _Spanisch_.” He looked down and frowned for a moment. “_Ach_, I
tell you, she look like the Frau Tellamantez, some-thing. Long face,
long chin, and ugly al-so.”

“Did she die a long while ago?”

“Die? I think not. I never hear, anyhow. I guess she is alive somewhere
in the world; Paris, may-be. But old, of course. I hear her when I was
a youth. She is too old to sing now any more.”

“Was she the greatest singer you ever heard?”

Wunsch nodded gravely. “Quite so. She was the most—” he hunted for an
English word, lifted his hand over his head and snapped his fingers
noiselessly in the air, enunciating fiercely, “_künst-ler-isch!_” The
word seemed to glitter in his uplifted hand, his voice was so full of
emotion.

Wunsch rose from the stool and began to button his wadded jacket,
preparing to return to his half-heated room in the loft. Thea
regretfully put on her cloak and hood and set out for home.

When Wunsch looked for his score late that afternoon, he found that
Thea had not forgotten to take it with her. He smiled his loose,
sarcastic smile, and thoughtfully rubbed his stubbly chin with his red
fingers. When Fritz came home in the early blue twilight the snow was
flying faster, Mrs. Kohler was cooking _Hasenpfeffer_ in the kitchen,
and the professor was seated at the piano, playing the Gluck, which he
knew by heart. Old Fritz took off his shoes quietly behind the stove
and lay down on the lounge before his masterpiece, where the firelight
was playing over the walls of Moscow. He listened, while the room grew
darker and the windows duller. Wunsch always came back to the same
thing:—

“Ach, ich habe sie verloren,
…
Euridice, Euridice!”

From time to time Fritz sighed softly. He, too, had lost a Euridice.

XI

One Saturday, late in June, Thea arrived early for her lesson. As she
perched herself upon the piano stool,—a wobbly, old-fashioned thing
that worked on a creaky screw,—she gave Wunsch a side glance, smiling.
“You must not be cross to me to-day. This is my birthday.”

“So?” he pointed to the keyboard.

After the lesson they went out to join Mrs. Kohler, who had asked Thea
to come early, so that she could stay and smell the linden bloom. It
was one of those still days of intense light, when every particle of
mica in the soil flashed like a little mirror, and the glare from the
plain below seemed more intense than the rays from above. The sand
ridges ran glittering gold out to where the mirage licked them up,
shining and steaming like a lake in the tropics. The sky looked like
blue lava, forever incapable of clouds,—a turquoise bowl that was the
lid of the desert. And yet within Mrs. Kohler’s green patch the water
dripped, the beds had all been hosed, and the air was fresh with
rapidly evaporating moisture.

The two symmetrical linden trees were the proudest things in the
garden. Their sweetness embalmed all the air. At every turn of the
paths,—whether one went to see the hollyhocks or the bleeding heart, or
to look at the purple morning-glories that ran over the
bean-poles,—wherever one went, the sweetness of the lindens struck one
afresh and one always came back to them. Under the round leaves, where
the waxen yellow blossoms hung, bevies of wild bees were buzzing. The
tamarisks were still pink, and the flower-beds were doing their best in
honor of the linden festival. The white dove-house was shining with a
fresh coat of paint, and the pigeons were crooning contentedly, flying
down often to drink at the drip from the water tank. Mrs. Kohler, who
was transplanting pansies, came up with her trowel and told Thea it was
lucky to have your birthday when the lindens were in bloom, and that
she must go and look at the sweet peas. Wunsch accompanied her, and as
they walked between the flower-beds he took Thea’s hand.

“Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen,”—

he muttered. “You know that von Heine? _Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen?_”
He looked down at Thea and softly pressed her hand.

“No, I don’t know it. What does _flüstern_ mean?”

“_Flüstern?_—to whisper. You must begin now to know such things. That
is necessary. How many birthdays?”

“Thirteen. I’m in my ’teens now. But how can I know words like that? I
only know what you say at my lessons. They don’t teach German at
school. How can I learn?”

“It is always possible to learn when one likes,” said Wunsch. His words
were peremptory, as usual, but his tone was mild, even confidential.
“There is always a way. And if some day you are going to sing, it is
necessary to know well the German language.”

Thea stooped over to pick a leaf of rosemary. How did Wunsch know that,
when the very roses on her wall-paper had never heard it? “But am I
going to?” she asked, still stooping.

“That is for you to say,” returned Wunsch coldly. “You would better
marry some _Jacob_ here and keep the house for him, may-be? That is as
one desires.”

Thea flashed up at him a clear, laughing look. “No, I don’t want to do
that. You know,” she brushed his coat sleeve quickly with her yellow
head. “Only how can I learn anything here? It’s so far from Denver.”

Wunsch’s loose lower lip curled in amusement. Then, as if he suddenly
remembered something, he spoke seriously. “Nothing is far and nothing
is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human
life is little. There is only one big thing—desire. And before it, when
it is big, all is little. It brought Columbus across the sea in a
little boat, _und so weiter_.” Wunsch made a grimace, took his pupil’s
hand and drew her toward the grape arbor. “Hereafter I will more speak
to you in German. Now, sit down and I will teach you for your birthday
that little song. Ask me the words you do not know already. Now: _Im
leuchtenden Sommermorgen_.”

Thea memorized quickly because she had the power of listening intently.
In a few moments she could repeat the eight lines for him. Wunsch
nodded encouragingly and they went out of the arbor into the sunlight
again. As they went up and down the gravel paths between the
flowerbeds, the white and yellow butterflies kept darting before them,
and the pigeons were washing their pink feet at the drip and crooning
in their husky bass. Over and over again Wunsch made her say the lines
to him. “You see it is nothing. If you learn a great many of the
_Lieder_, you will know the German language already. _Weiter, nun_.” He
would incline his head gravely and listen.

“Im leuchtenden Sommermorgen
Geh’ ich im Garten herum;
Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen,
Ich aber, ich wandte stumm.

“Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen
Und schau’n mitleidig mich an:
‘Sei unserer Schwester nicht böse,
Du trauriger, blasser Mann!’”

(In the soft-shining summer morning
I wandered the garden within.
The flowers they whispered and murmured,
But I, I wandered dumb.

The flowers they whisper and murmur,
And me with compassion they scan:
“Oh, be not harsh to our sister,
Thou sorrowful, death-pale man!”)

Wunsch had noticed before that when his pupil read anything in verse
the character of her voice changed altogether; it was no longer the
voice which spoke the speech of Moonstone. It was a soft, rich
contralto, and she read quietly; the feeling was in the voice itself,
not indicated by emphasis or change of pitch. She repeated the little
verses musically, like a song, and the entreaty of the flowers was even
softer than the rest, as the shy speech of flowers might be, and she
ended with the voice suspended, almost with a rising inflection. It was
a nature-voice, Wunsch told himself, breathed from the creature and
apart from language, like the sound of the wind in the trees, or the
murmur of water.

“What is it the flowers mean when they ask him not to be harsh to their
sister, eh?” he asked, looking down at her curiously and wrinkling his
dull red forehead.

Thea glanced at him in surprise. “I suppose he thinks they are asking
him not to be harsh to his sweetheart—or some girl they remind him of.”

“And why _trauriger, blasser Mann?_”

They had come back to the grape arbor, and Thea picked out a sunny
place on the bench, where a tortoise-shell cat was stretched at full
length. She sat down, bending over the cat and teasing his whiskers.
“Because he had been awake all night, thinking about her, wasn’t it?
Maybe that was why he was up so early.”

Wunsch shrugged his shoulders. “If he think about her all night
already, why do you say the flowers remind him?”

Thea looked up at him in perplexity. A flash of comprehension lit her
face and she smiled eagerly. “Oh, I didn’t mean ‘remind’ in that way! I
didn’t mean they brought her to his mind! I meant it was only when he
came out in the morning, that she seemed to him like that,—like one of
the flowers.”

“And before he came out, how did she seem?”

This time it was Thea who shrugged her shoulders. The warm smile left
her face. She lifted her eyebrows in annoyance and looked off at the
sand hills.

Wunsch persisted. “Why you not answer me?”

“Because it would be silly. You are just trying to make me say things.
It spoils things to ask questions.”

Wunsch bowed mockingly; his smile was disagreeable. Suddenly his face
grew grave, grew fierce, indeed. He pulled himself up from his clumsy
stoop and folded his arms. “But it is necessary to know if you know
some things. Some things cannot be taught. If you not know in the
beginning, you not know in the end. For a singer there must be
something in the inside from the beginning. I shall not be long in this
place, may-be, and I like to know. Yes,”—he ground his heel in the
gravel,—“yes, when you are barely six, you must know that already. That
is the beginning of all things; _der Geist, die Phantasie_. It must be
in the baby, when it makes its first cry, like _der Rhythmus_, or it is
not to be. You have some voice already, and if in the beginning, when
you are with things-to-play, you know that what you will not tell me,
then you can learn to sing, may-be.”

Wunsch began to pace the arbor, rubbing his hands together. The dark
flush of his face had spread up under the iron-gray bristles on his
head. He was talking to himself, not to Thea. Insidious power of the
linden bloom! “Oh, much you can learn! _Aber nicht die Americanischen
Fräulein_. They have nothing inside them,” striking his chest with both
fists. “They are like the ones in the _Märchen_, a grinning face and
hollow in the insides. Something they can learn, oh, yes, may-be! But
the secret—what make the rose to red, the sky to blue, the man to
love—_in der Brust, in der Brust_ it is, _und ohne dieses giebt es
keine Kunst, giebt es keine Kunst!_” He threw up his square hand and
shook it, all the fingers apart and wagging. Purple and breathless he
went out of the arbor and into the house, without saying good-bye.
These outbursts frightened Wunsch. They were always harbingers of ill.

Thea got her music-book and stole quietly out of the garden. She did
not go home, but wandered off into the sand dunes, where the prickly
pear was in blossom and the green lizards were racing each other in the
glittering light. She was shaken by a passionate excitement. She did
not altogether understand what Wunsch was talking about; and yet, in a
way she knew. She knew, of course, that there was something about her
that was different. But it was more like a friendly spirit than like
anything that was a part of herself. She thought everything to it, and
it answered her; happiness consisted of that backward and forward
movement of herself. The something came and went, she never knew how.
Sometimes she hunted for it and could not find it; again, she lifted
her eyes from a book, or stepped out of doors, or wakened in the
morning, and it was there,—under her cheek, it usually seemed to be, or
over her breast,—a kind of warm sureness. And when it was there,
everything was more interesting and beautiful, even people. When this
companion was with her, she could get the most wonderful things out of
Spanish Johnny, or Wunsch, or Dr. Archie.

On her thirteenth birthday she wandered for a long while about the sand
ridges, picking up crystals and looking into the yellow prickly-pear
blossoms with their thousand stamens. She looked at the sand hills
until she wished she _were_ a sand hill. And yet she knew that she was
going to leave them all behind some day. They would be changing all day
long, yellow and purple and lavender, and she would not be there. From
that day on, she felt there was a secret between her and Wunsch.
Together they had lifted a lid, pulled out a drawer, and looked at
something. They hid it away and never spoke of what they had seen; but
neither of them forgot it.

XII

One July night, when the moon was full, Dr. Archie was coming up from
the depot, restless and discontented, wishing there were something to
do. He carried his straw hat in his hand, and kept brushing his hair
back from his forehead with a purposeless, unsatisfied gesture. After
he passed Uncle Billy Beemer’s cottonwood grove, the sidewalk ran out
of the shadow into the white moonlight and crossed the sand gully on
high posts, like a bridge. As the doctor approached this trestle, he
saw a white figure, and recognized Thea Kronborg. He quickened his pace
and she came to meet him.

“What are you doing out so late, my girl?” he asked as he took her
hand.

“Oh, I don’t know. What do people go to bed so early for? I’d like to
run along before the houses and screech at them. Isn’t it glorious out
here?”

The young doctor gave a melancholy laugh and pressed her hand.

“Think of it,” Thea snorted impatiently. “Nobody up but us and the
rabbits! I’ve started up half a dozen of ’em. Look at that little one
down there now,”—she stooped and pointed. In the gully below them there
was, indeed, a little rabbit with a white spot of a tail, crouching
down on the sand, quite motionless. It seemed to be lapping up the
moonlight like cream. On the other side of the walk, down in the ditch,
there was a patch of tall, rank sunflowers, their shaggy leaves white
with dust. The moon stood over the cottonwood grove. There was no wind,
and no sound but the wheezing of an engine down on the tracks.

“Well, we may as well watch the rabbits.” Dr. Archie sat down on the
sidewalk and let his feet hang over the edge. He pulled out a smooth
linen handkerchief that smelled of German cologne water. “Well, how
goes it? Working hard? You must know about all Wunsch can teach you by
this time.”

Thea shook her head. “Oh, no, I don’t, Dr. Archie. He’s hard to get at,
but he’s been a real musician in his time. Mother says she believes
he’s forgotten more than the music-teachers down in Denver ever knew.”

“I’m afraid he won’t be around here much longer,” said Dr. Archie.
“He’s been making a tank of himself lately. He’ll be pulling his
freight one of these days. That’s the way they do, you know. I’ll be
sorry on your account.” He paused and ran his fresh handkerchief over
his face. “What the deuce are we all here for anyway, Thea?” he said
abruptly.

“On earth, you mean?” Thea asked in a low voice.

“Well, primarily, yes. But secondarily, why are we in Moonstone? It
isn’t as if we’d been born here. You were, but Wunsch wasn’t, and I
wasn’t. I suppose I’m here because I married as soon as I got out of
medical school and had to get a practice quick. If you hurry things,
you always get left in the end. I don’t learn anything here, and as for
the people—In my own town in Michigan, now, there were people who liked
me on my father’s account, who had even known my grandfather. That
meant something. But here it’s all like the sand: blows north one day
and south the next. We’re all a lot of gamblers without much nerve,
playing for small stakes. The railroad is the one real fact in this
country. That has to be; the world has to be got back and forth. But
the rest of us are here just because it’s the end of a run and the
engine has to have a drink. Some day I’ll get up and find my hair
turning gray, and I’ll have nothing to show for it.”

Thea slid closer to him and caught his arm. “No, no. I won’t let you
get gray. You’ve got to stay young for me. I’m getting young now, too.”

Archie laughed. “Getting?”

“Yes. People aren’t young when they’re children. Look at Thor, now;
he’s just a little old man. But Gus has a sweetheart, and he’s young!”

“Something in that!” Dr. Archie patted her head, and then felt the
shape of her skull gently, with the tips of his fingers. “When you were
little, Thea, I used always to be curious about the shape of your head.
You seemed to have more inside it than most youngsters. I haven’t
examined it for a long time. Seems to be the usual shape, but
uncommonly hard, some how. What are you going to do with yourself,
anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“Honest, now?” He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes.

Thea laughed and edged away from him.

“You’ve got something up your sleeve, haven’t you? Anything you like;
only don’t marry and settle down here without giving yourself a chance,
will you?”

“Not much. See, there’s another rabbit!”

“That’s all right about the rabbits, but I don’t want you to get tied
up. Remember that.”

Thea nodded. “Be nice to Wunsch, then. I don’t know what I’d do if he
went away.”

“You’ve got older friends than Wunsch here, Thea.”

“I know.” Thea spoke seriously and looked up at the moon, propping her
chin on her hand. “But Wunsch is the only one that can teach me what I
want to know. I’ve got to learn to do something well, and that’s the
thing I can do best.”

“Do you want to be a music-teacher?”

“Maybe, but I want to be a good one. I’d like to go to Germany to
study, some day. Wunsch says that’s the best place,—the only place you
can really learn.” Thea hesitated and then went on nervously, “I’ve got
a book that says so, too. It’s called ‘My Musical Memories.’ It made me
want to go to Germany even before Wunsch said anything. Of course it’s
a secret. You’re the first one I’ve told.”

Dr. Archie smiled indulgently. “That’s a long way off. Is that what
you’ve got in your hard noddle?” He put his hand on her hair, but this
time she shook him off.

“No, I don’t think much about it. But you talk about going, and a body
has to have something to go _to!_”

“That’s so.” Dr. Archie sighed. “You’re lucky if you have. Poor Wunsch,
now, he hasn’t. What do such fellows come out here for? He’s been
asking me about my mining stock, and about mining towns. What would he
do in a mining town? He wouldn’t know a piece of ore if he saw one.
He’s got nothing to sell that a mining town wants to buy. Why don’t
those old fellows stay at home? We won’t need them for another hundred
years. An engine wiper can get a job, but a piano player! Such people
can’t make good.”

“My grandfather Alstrom was a musician, and he made good.”

Dr. Archie chuckled. “Oh, a Swede can make good anywhere, at anything!
You’ve got that in your favor, miss. Come, you must be getting home.”

Thea rose. “Yes, I used to be ashamed of being a Swede, but I’m not any
more. Swedes are kind of common, but I think it’s better to be
_something_.”

“It surely is! How tall you are getting. You come above my shoulder
now.”

“I’ll keep on growing, don’t you think? I particularly want to be tall.
Yes, I guess I must go home. I wish there’d be a fire.”

“A fire?”

“Yes, so the fire-bell would ring and the roundhouse whistle would
blow, and everybody would come running out. Sometime I’m going to ring
the fire-bell myself and stir them all up.”

“You’d be arrested.”

“Well, that would be better than going to bed.”

“I’ll have to lend you some more books.”

Thea shook herself impatiently. “I can’t read every night.”

Dr. Archie gave one of his low, sympathetic chuckles as he opened the
gate for her. “You’re beginning to grow up, that’s what’s the matter
with you. I’ll have to keep an eye on you. Now you’ll have to say
good-night to the moon.”

“No, I won’t. I sleep on the floor now, right in the moonlight. My
window comes down to the floor, and I can look at the sky all night.”

She shot round the house to the kitchen door, and Dr. Archie watched
her disappear with a sigh. He thought of the hard, mean, frizzy little
woman who kept his house for him; once the belle of a Michigan town,
now dry and withered up at thirty. “If I had a daughter like Thea to
watch,” he reflected, “I wouldn’t mind anything. I wonder if all of my
life’s going to be a mistake just because I made a big one then? Hardly
seems fair.”

Howard Archie was “respected” rather than popular in Moonstone.
Everyone recognized that he was a good physician, and a progressive
Western town likes to be able to point to a handsome, well-set-up,
well-dressed man among its citizens. But a great many people thought
Archie “distant,” and they were right. He had the uneasy manner of a
man who is not among his own kind, and who has not seen enough of the
world to feel that all people are in some sense his own kind. He knew
that every one was curious about his wife, that she played a sort of
character part in Moonstone, and that people made fun of her, not very
delicately. Her own friends—most of them women who were distasteful to
Archie—liked to ask her to contribute to church charities, just to see
how mean she could be. The little, lop-sided cake at the church supper,
the cheapest pincushion, the skimpiest apron at the bazaar, were always
Mrs. Archie’s contribution.

All this hurt the doctor’s pride. But if there was one thing he had
learned, it was that there was no changing Belle’s nature. He had
married a mean woman; and he must accept the consequences. Even in
Colorado he would have had no pretext for divorce, and, to do him
justice, he had never thought of such a thing. The tenets of the
Presbyterian Church in which he had grown up, though he had long ceased
to believe in them, still influenced his conduct and his conception of
propriety. To him there was something vulgar about divorce. A divorced
man was a disgraced man; at least, he had exhibited his hurt, and made
it a matter for common gossip. Respectability was so necessary to
Archie that he was willing to pay a high price for it. As long as he
could keep up a decent exterior, he could manage to get on; and if he
could have concealed his wife’s littleness from all his friends, he
would scarcely have complained. He was more afraid of pity than he was
of any unhappiness. Had there been another woman for whom he cared
greatly, he might have had plenty of courage; but he was not likely to
meet such a woman in Moonstone.

There was a puzzling timidity in Archie’s make-up. The thing that held
his shoulders stiff, that made him resort to a mirthless little laugh
when he was talking to dull people, that made him sometimes stumble
over rugs and carpets, had its counterpart in his mind. He had not the
courage to be an honest thinker. He could comfort himself by evasions
and compromises. He consoled himself for his own marriage by telling
himself that other people’s were not much better. In his work he saw
pretty deeply into marital relations in Moonstone, and he could
honestly say that there were not many of his friends whom he envied.
Their wives seemed to suit them well enough, but they would never have
suited him.

Although Dr. Archie could not bring himself to regard marriage merely
as a social contract, but looked upon it as somehow made sacred by a
church in which he did not believe,—as a physician he knew that a young
man whose marriage is merely nominal must yet go on living his life.
When he went to Denver or to Chicago, he drifted about in careless
company where gayety and good-humor can be bought, not because he had
any taste for such society, but because he honestly believed that
anything was better than divorce. He often told himself that “hanging
and wiving go by destiny.” If wiving went badly with a man,—and it did
oftener than not,—then he must do the best he could to keep up
appearances and help the tradition of domestic happiness along. The
Moonstone gossips, assembled in Mrs. Smiley’s millinery and notion
store, often discussed Dr. Archie’s politeness to his wife, and his
pleasant manner of speaking about her. “Nobody has ever got a thing out
of him yet,” they agreed. And it was certainly not because no one had
ever tried.

When he was down in Denver, feeling a little jolly, Archie could forget
how unhappy he was at home, and could even make himself believe that he
missed his wife. He always bought her presents, and would have liked to
send her flowers if she had not repeatedly told him never to send her
anything but bulbs,—which did not appeal to him in his expansive
moments. At the Denver Athletic Club banquets, or at dinner with his
colleagues at the Brown Palace Hotel, he sometimes spoke sentimentally
about “little Mrs. Archie,” and he always drank the toast “to our
wives, God bless them!” with gusto.

The determining factor about Dr. Archie was that he was romantic. He
had married Belle White because he was romantic—too romantic to know
anything about women, except what he wished them to be, or to repulse a
pretty girl who had set her cap for him. At medical school, though he
was a rather wild boy in behavior, he had always disliked coarse jokes
and vulgar stories. In his old Flint’s Physiology there was still a
poem he had pasted there when he was a student; some verses by Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes about the ideals of the medical profession. After
so much and such disillusioning experience with it, he still had a
romantic feeling about the human body; a sense that finer things dwelt
in it than could be explained by anatomy. He never jested about birth
or death or marriage, and did not like to hear other doctors do it. He
was a good nurse, and had a reverence for the bodies of women and
children. When he was tending them, one saw him at his best. Then his
constraint and self-consciousness fell away from him. He was easy,
gentle, competent, master of himself and of other people. Then the
idealist in him was not afraid of being discovered and ridiculed.

In his tastes, too, the doctor was romantic. Though he read Balzac all
the year through, he still enjoyed the Waverley Novels as much as when
he had first come upon them, in thick leather-bound volumes, in his
grandfather’s library. He nearly always read Scott on Christmas and
holidays, because it brought back the pleasures of his boyhood so
vividly. He liked Scott’s women. Constance de Beverley and the minstrel
girl in “The Fair Maid of Perth,” not the Duchesse de Langeais, were
his heroines. But better than anything that ever got from the heart of
a man into printer’s ink, he loved the poetry of Robert Burns. “Death
and Dr. Hornbook” and “The Jolly Beggars,” Burns’s “Reply to his
Tailor,” he often read aloud to himself in his office, late at night,
after a glass of hot toddy. He used to read “Tam o’Shanter” to Thea
Kronborg, and he got her some of the songs, set to the old airs for
which they were written. He loved to hear her sing them. Sometimes when
she sang, “Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast,” the doctor and even Mr.
Kronborg joined in. Thea never minded if people could not sing; she
directed them with her head and somehow carried them along. When her
father got off the pitch she let her own voice out and covered him.

XIII

At the beginning of June, when school closed, Thea had told Wunsch that
she didn’t know how much practicing she could get in this summer
because Thor had his worst teeth still to cut.

“My God! all last summer he was doing that!” Wunsch exclaimed
furiously.

“I know, but it takes them two years, and Thor is slow,” Thea answered
reprovingly.

The summer went well beyond her hopes, however. She told herself that
it was the best summer of her life, so far. Nobody was sick at home,
and her lessons were uninterrupted. Now that she had four pupils of her
own and made a dollar a week, her practicing was regarded more
seriously by the household. Her mother had always arranged things so
that she could have the parlor four hours a day in summer. Thor proved
a friendly ally. He behaved handsomely about his molars, and never
objected to being pulled off into remote places in his cart. When Thea
dragged him over the hill and made a camp under the shade of a bush or
a bank, he would waddle about and play with his blocks, or bury his
monkey in the sand and dig him up again. Sometimes he got into the
cactus and set up a howl, but usually he let his sister read
peacefully, while he coated his hands and face, first with an all-day
sucker and then with gravel.

Life was pleasant and uneventful until the first of September, when
Wunsch began to drink so hard that he was unable to appear when Thea
went to take her mid-week lesson, and Mrs. Kohler had to send her home
after a tearful apology. On Saturday morning she set out for the
Kohlers’ again, but on her way, when she was crossing the ravine, she
noticed a woman sitting at the bottom of the gulch, under the railroad
trestle. She turned from her path and saw that it was Mrs. Tellamantez,
and she seemed to be doing drawn-work. Then Thea noticed that there was
something beside her, covered up with a purple and yellow Mexican
blanket. She ran up the gulch and called to Mrs. Tellamantez. The
Mexican woman held up a warning finger. Thea glanced at the blanket and
recognized a square red hand which protruded. The middle finger
twitched slightly.

“Is he hurt?” she gasped.

Mrs. Tellamantez shook her head. “No; very sick. He knows nothing,” she
said quietly, folding her hands over her drawn-work.

Thea learned that Wunsch had been out all night, that this morning Mrs.
Kohler had gone to look for him and found him under the trestle covered
with dirt and cinders. Probably he had been trying to get home and had
lost his way. Mrs. Tellamantez was watching beside the unconscious man
while Mrs. Kohler and Johnny went to get help.

“You better go home now, I think,” said Mrs. Tellamantez, in closing
her narration.

Thea hung her head and looked wistfully toward the blanket.

“Couldn’t I just stay till they come?” she asked. “I’d like to know if
he’s very bad.”

“Bad enough,” sighed Mrs. Tellamantez, taking up her work again.

Thea sat down under the narrow shade of one of the trestle posts and
listened to the locusts rasping in the hot sand while she watched Mrs.
Tellamantez evenly draw her threads. The blanket looked as if it were
over a heap of bricks.

“I don’t see him breathing any,” she said anxiously.

“Yes, he breathes,” said Mrs. Tellamantez, not lifting her eyes.

It seemed to Thea that they waited for hours. At last they heard
voices, and a party of men came down the hill and up the gulch. Dr.
Archie and Fritz Kohler came first; behind were Johnny and Ray, and
several men from the roundhouse. Ray had the canvas litter that was
kept at the depot for accidents on the road. Behind them trailed half a
dozen boys who had been hanging round the depot.

When Ray saw Thea, he dropped his canvas roll and hurried forward.
“Better run along home, Thee. This is ugly business.” Ray was indignant
that anybody who gave Thea music lessons should behave in such a
manner.

Thea resented both his proprietary tone and his superior virtue. “I
won’t. I want to know how bad he is. I’m not a baby!” she exclaimed
indignantly, stamping her foot into the sand.

Dr. Archie, who had been kneeling by the blanket, got up and came
toward Thea, dusting his knees. He smiled and nodded confidentially.
“He’ll be all right when we get him home. But he wouldn’t want you to
see him like this, poor old chap! Understand? Now, skip!”

Thea ran down the gulch and looked back only once, to see them lifting
the canvas litter with Wunsch upon it, still covered with the blanket.

The men carried Wunsch up the hill and down the road to the Kohlers’.
Mrs. Kohler had gone home and made up a bed in the sitting-room, as she
knew the litter could not be got round the turn in the narrow stairway.
Wunsch was like a dead man. He lay unconscious all day. Ray Kennedy
stayed with him till two o’clock in the afternoon, when he had to go
out on his run. It was the first time he had ever been inside the
Kohlers’ house, and he was so much impressed by Napoleon that the
piece-picture formed a new bond between him and Thea.

Dr. Archie went back at six o’clock, and found Mrs. Kohler and Spanish
Johnny with Wunsch, who was in a high fever, muttering and groaning.

“There ought to be some one here to look after him to-night, Mrs.
Kohler,” he said. “I’m on a confinement case, and I can’t be here, but
there ought to be somebody. He may get violent.”

Mrs. Kohler insisted that she could always do anything with Wunsch, but
the doctor shook his head and Spanish Johnny grinned. He said he would
stay. The doctor laughed at him. “Ten fellows like you couldn’t hold
him, Spanish, if he got obstreperous; an Irishman would have his hands
full. Guess I’d better put the soft pedal on him.” He pulled out his
hypodermic.

Spanish Johnny stayed, however, and the Kohlers went to bed. At about
two o’clock in the morning Wunsch rose from his ignominious cot.
Johnny, who was dozing on the lounge, awoke to find the German standing
in the middle of the room in his undershirt and drawers, his arms bare,
his heavy body seeming twice its natural girth. His face was snarling
and savage, and his eyes were crazy. He had risen to avenge himself, to
wipe out his shame, to destroy his enemy. One look was enough for
Johnny. Wunsch raised a chair threateningly, and Johnny, with the
lightness of a _picador_, darted under the missile and out of the open
window. He shot across the gully to get help, meanwhile leaving the
Kohlers to their fate.

Fritz, upstairs, heard the chair crash upon the stove. Then he heard
doors opening and shutting, and some one stumbling about in the
shrubbery of the garden. He and Paulina sat up in bed and held a
consultation. Fritz slipped from under the covers, and going cautiously
over to the window, poked out his head. Then he rushed to the door and
bolted it.

“_Mein Gott_, Paulina,” he gasped, “he has the axe, he will kill us!”

“The dresser,” cried Mrs. Kohler; “push the dresser before the door.
_Ach_, if you had your rabbit gun, now!”

“It is in the barn,” said Fritz sadly. “It would do no good; he would
not be afraid of anything now. Stay you in the bed, Paulina.” The
dresser had lost its casters years ago, but he managed to drag it in
front of the door. “He is in the garden. He makes nothing. He will get
sick again, may-be.”

Fritz went back to bed and his wife pulled the quilt over him and made
him lie down. They heard stumbling in the garden again, then a smash of
glass.

“_Ach, das Mistbeet!_” gasped Paulina, hearing her hotbed shivered.
“The poor soul, Fritz, he will cut himself. _Ach!_ what is that?” They
both sat up in bed. “_Wieder! Ach_, What is he doing?”

The noise came steadily, a sound of chopping. Paulina tore off her
night-cap. “_Die Bäume, die Bäume!_ He is cutting our trees, Fritz!”
Before her husband could prevent her, she had sprung from the bed and
rushed to the window. “_Der Taubenschlag! Gerechter Himmel_, he is
chopping the dove-house down!”

Fritz reached her side before she had got her breath again, and poked
his head out beside hers. There, in the faint starlight, they saw a
bulky man, barefoot, half dressed, chopping away at the white post that
formed the pedestal of the dove-house. The startled pigeons were
croaking and flying about his head, even beating their wings in his
face, so that he struck at them furiously with the axe. In a few
seconds there was a crash, and Wunsch had actually felled the
dove-house.

“Oh, if only it is not the trees next!” prayed Paulina. “The dove-house
you can make new again, but not _die Bäume_.”

They watched breathlessly. In the garden below Wunsch stood in the
attitude of a woodman, contemplating the fallen cote. Suddenly he threw
the axe over his shoulder and went out of the front gate toward the
town.

“The poor soul, he will meet his death!” Mrs. Kohler wailed. She ran
back to her feather bed and hid her face in the pillow.

Fritz kept watch at the window. “No, no, Paulina,” he called presently;
“I see lanterns coming. Johnny must have gone for somebody. Yes, four
lanterns, coming along the gulch. They stop; they must have seen him
already. Now they are under the hill and I cannot see them, but I think
they have him. They will bring him back. I must dress and go down.” He
caught his trousers and began pulling them on by the window. “Yes, here
they come, half a dozen men. And they have tied him with a rope,
Paulina!”

“_Ach_, the poor man! To be led like a cow,” groaned Mrs. Kohler. “Oh,
it is good that he has no wife!” She was reproaching herself for
nagging Fritz when he drank himself into foolish pleasantry or mild
sulks, and felt that she had never before appreciated her blessings.

Wunsch was in bed for ten days, during which time he was gossiped about
and even preached about in Moonstone. The Baptist preacher took a shot
at the fallen man from his pulpit, Mrs. Livery Johnson nodding
approvingly from her pew. The mothers of Wunsch’s pupils sent him notes
informing him that their daughters would discontinue their
music-lessons. The old maid who had rented him her piano sent the town
dray for her contaminated instrument, and ever afterward declared that
Wunsch had ruined its tone and scarred its glossy finish. The Kohlers
were unremitting in their kindness to their friend. Mrs. Kohler made
him soups and broths without stint, and Fritz repaired the dove-house
and mounted it on a new post, lest it might be a sad reminder.

As soon as Wunsch was strong enough to sit about in his slippers and
wadded jacket, he told Fritz to bring him some stout thread from the
shop. When Fritz asked what he was going to sew, he produced the
tattered score of “Orpheus” and said he would like to fix it up for a
little present. Fritz carried it over to the shop and stitched it into
pasteboards, covered with dark suiting-cloth. Over the stitches he
glued a strip of thin red leather which he got from his friend, the
harness-maker. After Paulina had cleaned the pages with fresh bread,
Wunsch was amazed to see what a fine book he had. It opened stiffly,
but that was no matter.

Sitting in the arbor one morning, under the ripe grapes and the brown,
curling leaves, with a pen and ink on the bench beside him and the
Gluck score on his knee, Wunsch pondered for a long while. Several
times he dipped the pen in the ink, and then put it back again in the
cigar box in which Mrs. Kohler kept her writing utensils. His thoughts
wandered over a wide territory; over many countries and many years.
There was no order or logical sequence in his ideas. Pictures came and
went without reason. Faces, mountains, rivers, autumn days in other
vineyards far away. He thought of a _Fuszreise_ he had made through the
Hartz Mountains in his student days; of the innkeeper’s pretty daughter
who had lighted his pipe for him in the garden one summer evening, of
the woods above Wiesbaden, haymakers on an island in the river. The
roundhouse whistle woke him from his reveries. Ah, yes, he was in
Moonstone, Colorado. He frowned for a moment and looked at the book on
his knee. He had thought of a great many appropriate things to write in
it, but suddenly he rejected all of them, opened the book, and at the
top of the much-engraved title-page he wrote rapidly in purple ink:—

Einst, O Wunder!—

A. Wunsch.

Moonstone, Colo.
September 30, 18—

Nobody in Moonstone ever found what Wunsch’s first name was. That “A”
may have stood for Adam, or August, or even Amadeus; he got very angry
if any one asked him.

He remained A. Wunsch to the end of his chapter there. When he
presented this score to Thea, he told her that in ten years she would
either know what the inscription meant, or she would not have the least
idea, in which case it would not matter.

When Wunsch began to pack his trunk, both the Kohlers were very
unhappy. He said he was coming back some day, but that for the present,
since he had lost all his pupils, it would be better for him to try
some “new town.” Mrs. Kohler darned and mended all his clothes, and
gave him two new shirts she had made for Fritz. Fritz made him a new
pair of trousers and would have made him an overcoat but for the fact
that overcoats were so easy to pawn.

Wunsch would not go across the ravine to the town until he went to take
the morning train for Denver. He said that after he got to Denver he
would “look around.” He left Moonstone one bright October morning,
without telling any one good-bye. He bought his ticket and went
directly into the smoking-car. When the train was beginning to pull
out, he heard his name called frantically, and looking out of the
window he saw Thea Kronborg standing on the siding, bareheaded and
panting. Some boys had brought word to school that they saw Wunsch’s
trunk going over to the station, and Thea had run away from school. She
was at the end of the station platform, her hair in two braids, her
blue gingham dress wet to the knees because she had run across lots
through the weeds. It had rained during the night, and the tall
sunflowers behind her were fresh and shining.

“Good-bye, Herr Wunsch, good-bye!” she called waving to him.

He thrust his head out at the car window and called back, “_Leben sie
wohl, leben sie wohl, mein Kind!_” He watched her until the train swept
around the curve beyond the roundhouse, and then sank back into his
seat, muttering, “She had been running. Ah, she will run a long way;
they cannot stop her!”

What was it about the child that one believed in? Was it her dogged
industry, so unusual in this free-and-easy country? Was it her
imagination? More likely it was because she had both imagination and a
stubborn will, curiously balancing and interpenetrating each other.
There was something unconscious and unawakened about her, that tempted
curiosity. She had a kind of seriousness that he had not met with in a
pupil before. She hated difficult things, and yet she could never pass
one by. They seemed to challenge her; she had no peace until she
mastered them. She had the power to make a great effort, to lift a
weight heavier than herself. Wunsch hoped he would always remember her
as she stood by the track, looking up at him; her broad eager face, so
fair in color, with its high cheek-bones, yellow eyebrows and
greenishhazel eyes. It was a face full of light and energy, of the
unquestioning hopefulness of first youth. Yes, she was like a flower
full of sun, but not the soft German flowers of his childhood. He had
it now, the comparison he had absently reached for before: she was like
the yellow prickly pear blossoms that open there in the desert;
thornier and sturdier than the maiden flowers he remembered; not so
sweet, but wonderful.

That night Mrs. Kohler brushed away many a tear as she got supper and
set the table for two. When they sat down, Fritz was more silent than
usual. People who have lived long together need a third at table: they
know each other’s thoughts so well that they have nothing left to say.
Mrs. Kohler stirred and stirred her coffee and clattered the spoon, but
she had no heart for her supper. She felt, for the first time in years,
that she was tired of her own cooking. She looked across the glass lamp
at her husband and asked him if the butcher liked his new overcoat, and
whether he had got the shoulders right in a ready-made suit he was
patching over for Ray Kennedy. After supper Fritz offered to wipe the
dishes for her, but she told him to go about his business, and not to
act as if she were sick or getting helpless.

When her work in the kitchen was all done, she went out to cover the
oleanders against frost, and to take a last look at her chickens. As
she came back from the hen-house she stopped by one of the linden trees
and stood resting her hand on the trunk. He would never come back, the
poor man; she knew that. He would drift on from new town to new town,
from catastrophe to catastrophe. He would hardly find a good home for
himself again. He would die at last in some rough place, and be buried
in the desert or on the wild prairie, far enough from any linden tree!

Fritz, smoking his pipe on the kitchen doorstep, watched his Paulina
and guessed her thoughts. He, too, was sorry to lose his friend. But
Fritz was getting old; he had lived a long while and had learned to
lose without struggle.

XIV

“Mother,” said Peter Kronborg to his wife one morning about two weeks
after Wunsch’s departure, “how would you like to drive out to Copper
Hole with me to-day?”

Mrs. Kronborg said she thought she would enjoy the drive. She put on
her gray cashmere dress and gold watch and chain, as befitted a
minister’s wife, and while her husband was dressing she packed a black
oilcloth satchel with such clothing as she and Thor would need
overnight.

Copper Hole was a settlement fifteen miles northwest of Moonstone where
Mr. Kronborg preached every Friday evening. There was a big spring
there and a creek and a few irrigating ditches. It was a community of
discouraged agriculturists who had disastrously experimented with dry
farming. Mr. Kronborg always drove out one day and back the next,
spending the night with one of his parishioners. Often, when the
weather was fine, his wife accompanied him. To-day they set out from
home after the midday meal, leaving Tillie in charge of the house. Mrs.
Kronborg’s maternal feeling was always garnered up in the baby, whoever
the baby happened to be. If she had the baby with her, the others could
look out for themselves. Thor, of course, was not, accurately speaking,
a baby any longer. In the matter of nourishment he was quite
independent of his mother, though this independence had not been won
without a struggle. Thor was conservative in all things, and the whole
family had anguished with him when he was being weaned. Being the
youngest, he was still the baby for Mrs. Kronborg, though he was nearly
four years old and sat up boldly on her lap this afternoon, holding on
to the ends of the lines and shouting “’mup, ’mup, horsey.” His father
watched him affectionately and hummed hymn tunes in the jovial way that
was sometimes such a trial to Thea.

Mrs. Kronborg was enjoying the sunshine and the brilliant sky and all
the faintly marked features of the dazzling, monotonous landscape. She
had a rather unusual capacity for getting the flavor of places and of
people. Although she was so enmeshed in family cares most of the time,
she could emerge serene when she was away from them. For a mother of
seven, she had a singularly unprejudiced point of view. She was,
moreover, a fatalist, and as she did not attempt to direct things
beyond her control, she found a good deal of time to enjoy the ways of
man and nature.

When they were well upon their road, out where the first lean pasture
lands began and the sand grass made a faint showing between the
sagebrushes, Mr. Kronborg dropped his tune and turned to his wife.
“Mother, I’ve been thinking about something.”

“I guessed you had. What is it?” She shifted Thor to her left knee,
where he would be more out of the way.

“Well, it’s about Thea. Mr. Follansbee came to my study at the church
the other day and said they would like to have their two girls take
lessons of Thea. Then I sounded Miss Meyers” (Miss Meyers was the
organist in Mr. Kronborg’s church) “and she said there was a good deal
of talk about whether Thea wouldn’t take over Wunsch’s pupils. She said
if Thea stopped school she wouldn’t wonder if she could get pretty much
all Wunsch’s class. People think Thea knows about all Wunsch could
teach.”

Mrs. Kronborg looked thoughtful. “Do you think we ought to take her out
of school so young?”

“She is young, but next year would be her last year anyway. She’s far
along for her age. And she can’t learn much under the principal we’ve
got now, can she?”

“No, I’m afraid she can’t,” his wife admitted. “She frets a good deal
and says that man always has to look in the back of the book for the
answers. She hates all that diagramming they have to do, and I think
myself it’s a waste of time.”

Mr. Kronborg settled himself back into the seat and slowed the mare to
a walk. “You see, it occurs to me that we might raise Thea’s prices, so
it would be worth her while. Seventy-five cents for hour lessons, fifty
cents for half-hour lessons. If she got, say two thirds of Wunsch’s
class, that would bring her in upwards of ten dollars a week. Better
pay than teaching a country school, and there would be more work in
vacation than in winter. Steady work twelve months in the year; that’s
an advantage. And she’d be living at home, with no expenses.”

“There’d be talk if you raised her prices,” said Mrs. Kronborg
dubiously.

“At first there would. But Thea is so much the best musician in town
that they’d all come into line after a while. A good many people in
Moonstone have been making money lately, and have bought new pianos.
There were ten new pianos shipped in here from Denver in the last year.
People ain’t going to let them stand idle; too much money invested. I
believe Thea can have as many scholars as she can handle, if we set her
up a little.”

“How set her up, do you mean?” Mrs. Kronborg felt a certain reluctance
about accepting this plan, though she had not yet had time to think out
her reasons.

“Well, I’ve been thinking for some time we could make good use of
another room. We couldn’t give up the parlor to her all the time. If we
built another room on the ell and put the piano in there, she could
give lessons all day long and it wouldn’t bother us. We could build a
clothes-press in it, and put in a bed-lounge and a dresser and let Anna
have it for her sleeping-room. She needs a place of her own, now that
she’s beginning to be dressy.”

“Seems like Thea ought to have the choice of the room, herself,” said
Mrs. Kronborg.

“But, my dear, she don’t want it. Won’t have it. I sounded her coming
home from church on Sunday; asked her if she would like to sleep in a
new room, if we built on. She fired up like a little wild-cat and said
she’d made her own room all herself, and she didn’t think anybody ought
to take it away from her.”

“She don’t mean to be impertinent, father. She’s made decided that way,
like my father.” Mrs. Kronborg spoke warmly. “I never have any trouble
with the child. I remember my father’s ways and go at her carefully.
Thea’s all right.”

Mr. Kronborg laughed indulgently and pinched Thor’s full cheek. “Oh, I
didn’t mean anything against your girl, mother! She’s all right, but
she’s a little wild-cat, just the same. I think Ray Kennedy’s planning
to spoil a born old maid.”

“Huh! She’ll get something a good sight better than Ray Kennedy, you
see! Thea’s an awful smart girl. I’ve seen a good many girls take music
lessons in my time, but I ain’t seen one that took to it so. Wunsch
said so, too. She’s got the making of something in her.”

“I don’t deny that, and the sooner she gets at it in a businesslike
way, the better. She’s the kind that takes responsibility, and it’ll be
good for her.”

Mrs. Kronborg was thoughtful. “In some ways it will, maybe. But there’s
a good deal of strain about teaching youngsters, and she’s always
worked so hard with the scholars she has. I’ve often listened to her
pounding it into ’em. I don’t want to work her too hard. She’s so
serious that she’s never had what you might call any real childhood.
Seems like she ought to have the next few years sort of free and easy.
She’ll be tied down with responsibilities soon enough.”

Mr. Kronborg patted his wife’s arm. “Don’t you believe it, mother. Thea
is not the marrying kind. I’ve watched ’em. Anna will marry before long
and make a good wife, but I don’t see Thea bringing up a family. She’s
got a good deal of her mother in her, but she hasn’t got all. She’s too
peppery and too fond of having her own way. Then she’s always got to be
ahead in everything. That kind make good church-workers and
missionaries and school teachers, but they don’t make good wives. They
fret all their energy away, like colts, and get cut on the wire.”

Mrs. Kronborg laughed. “Give me the graham crackers I put in your
pocket for Thor. He’s hungry. You’re a funny man, Peter. A body
wouldn’t think, to hear you, you was talking about your own daughters.
I guess you see through ’em. Still, even if Thea ain’t apt to have
children of her own, I don’t know as that’s a good reason why she
should wear herself out on other people’s.”

“That’s just the point, mother. A girl with all that energy has got to
do something, same as a boy, to keep her out of mischief. If you don’t
want her to marry Ray, let her do something to make herself
independent.”

“Well, I’m not against it. It might be the best thing for her. I wish I
felt sure she wouldn’t worry. She takes things hard. She nearly cried
herself sick about Wunsch’s going away. She’s the smartest child of ’em
all, Peter, by a long ways.”

Peter Kronborg smiled. “There you go, Anna. That’s you all over again.
Now, I have no favorites; they all have their good points. But you,”
with a twinkle, “always did go in for brains.”

Mrs. Kronborg chuckled as she wiped the cracker crumbs from Thor’s chin
and fists. “Well, you’re mighty conceited, Peter! But I don’t know as I
ever regretted it. I prefer having a family of my own to fussing with
other folks’ children, that’s the truth.”

Before the Kronborgs reached Copper Hole, Thea’s destiny was pretty
well mapped out for her. Mr. Kronborg was always delighted to have an
excuse for enlarging the house.

Mrs. Kronborg was quite right in her conjecture that there would be
unfriendly comment in Moonstone when Thea raised her prices for
music-lessons. People said she was getting too conceited for anything.
Mrs. Livery Johnson put on a new bonnet and paid up all her back calls
to have the pleasure of announcing in each parlor she entered that her
daughters, at least, would “never pay professional prices to Thea
Kronborg.”

Thea raised no objection to quitting school. She was now in the “high
room,” as it was called, in next to the highest class, and was studying
geometry and beginning Caesar. She no longer recited her lessons to the
teacher she liked, but to the Principal, a man who belonged, like Mrs.
Livery Johnson, to the camp of Thea’s natural enemies. He taught school
because he was too lazy to work among grown-up people, and he made an
easy job of it. He got out of real work by inventing useless activities
for his pupils, such as the “tree-diagramming system.” Thea had spent
hours making trees out of “Thanatopsis,” Hamlet’s soliloquy, Cato on
“Immortality.” She agonized under this waste of time, and was only too
glad to accept her father’s offer of liberty.

So Thea left school the first of November. By the first of January she
had eight one-hour pupils and ten half-hour pupils, and there would be
more in the summer. She spent her earnings generously. She bought a new
Brussels carpet for the parlor, and a rifle for Gunner and Axel, and an
imitation tiger-skin coat and cap for Thor. She enjoyed being able to
add to the family possessions, and thought Thor looked quite as
handsome in his spots as the rich children she had seen in Denver. Thor
was most complacent in his conspicuous apparel. He could walk anywhere
by this time—though he always preferred to sit, or to be pulled in his
cart. He was a blissfully lazy child, and had a number of long, dull
plays, such as making nests for his china duck and waiting for her to
lay him an egg. Thea thought him very intelligent, and she was proud
that he was so big and burly. She found him restful, loved to hear him
call her “sitter,” and really liked his companionship, especially when
she was tired. On Saturday, for instance, when she taught from nine in
the morning until five in the afternoon, she liked to get off in a
corner with Thor after supper, away from all the bathing and dressing
and joking and talking that went on in the house, and ask him about his
duck, or hear him tell one of his rambling stories.

XV

By the time Thea’s fifteenth birthday came round, she was established
as a music teacher in Moonstone. The new room had been added to the
house early in the spring, and Thea had been giving her lessons there
since the middle of May. She liked the personal independence which was
accorded her as a wage-earner. The family questioned her comings and
goings very little. She could go buggy-riding with Ray Kennedy, for
instance, without taking Gunner or Axel. She could go to Spanish
Johnny’s and sing part songs with the Mexicans, and nobody objected.

Thea was still under the first excitement of teaching, and was terribly
in earnest about it. If a pupil did not get on well, she fumed and
fretted. She counted until she was hoarse. She listened to scales in
her sleep. Wunsch had taught only one pupil seriously, but Thea taught
twenty. The duller they were, the more furiously she poked and prodded
them. With the little girls she was nearly always patient, but with
pupils older than herself, she sometimes lost her temper. One of her
mistakes was to let herself in for a calling-down from Mrs. Livery
Johnson. That lady appeared at the Kronborgs’ one morning and announced
that she would allow no girl to stamp her foot at her daughter Grace.
She added that Thea’s bad manners with the older girls were being
talked about all over town, and that if her temper did not speedily
improve she would lose all her advanced pupils. Thea was frightened.
She felt she could never bear the disgrace, if such a thing happened.
Besides, what would her father say, after he had gone to the expense of
building an addition to the house? Mrs. Johnson demanded an apology to
Grace. Thea said she was willing to make it. Mrs. Johnson said that
hereafter, since she had taken lessons of the best piano teacher in
Grinnell, Iowa, she herself would decide what pieces Grace should
study. Thea readily consented to that, and Mrs. Johnson rustled away to
tell a neighbor woman that Thea Kronborg could be meek enough when you
went at her right.

Thea was telling Ray about this unpleasant encounter as they were
driving out to the sand hills the next Sunday.

“She was stuffing you, all right, Thee,” Ray reassured her. “There’s no
general dissatisfaction among your scholars. She just wanted to get in
a knock. I talked to the piano tuner the last time he was here, and he
said all the people he tuned for expressed themselves very favorably
about your teaching. I wish you didn’t take so much pains with them,
myself.”

“But I have to, Ray. They’re all so dumb. They’ve got no ambition,”
Thea exclaimed irritably. “Jenny Smiley is the only one who isn’t
stupid. She can read pretty well, and she has such good hands. But she
don’t care a rap about it. She has no pride.”

Ray’s face was full of complacent satisfaction as he glanced sidewise
at Thea, but she was looking off intently into the mirage, at one of
those mammoth cattle that are nearly always reflected there. “Do you
find it easier to teach in your new room?” he asked.

“Yes; I’m not interrupted so much. Of course, if I ever happen to want
to practice at night, that’s always the night Anna chooses to go to bed
early.”

“It’s a darned shame, Thee, you didn’t cop that room for yourself. I’m
sore at the _padre_ about that. He ought to give you that room. You
could fix it up so pretty.”

“I didn’t want it, honest I didn’t. Father would have let me have it. I
like my own room better. Somehow I can think better in a little room.
Besides, up there I am away from everybody, and I can read as late as I
please and nobody nags me.”

“A growing girl needs lots of sleep,” Ray providently remarked.

Thea moved restlessly on the buggy cushions. “They need other things
more,” she muttered. “Oh, I forgot. I brought something to show you.
Look here, it came on my birthday. Wasn’t it nice of him to remember?”
She took from her pocket a postcard, bent in the middle and folded, and
handed it to Ray. On it was a white dove, perched on a wreath of very
blue forget-me-nots, and “Birthday Greetings” in gold letters. Under
this was written, “From A. Wunsch.”

Ray turned the card over, examined the postmark, and then began to
laugh.

“Concord, Kansas. He has my sympathy!”

“Why, is that a poor town?”

“It’s the jumping-off place, no town at all. Some houses dumped down in
the middle of a cornfield. You get lost in the corn. Not even a saloon
to keep things going; sell whiskey without a license at the butcher
shop, beer on ice with the liver and beefsteak. I wouldn’t stay there
over Sunday for a ten-dollar bill.”

“Oh, dear! What do you suppose he’s doing there? Maybe he just stopped
off there a few days to tune pianos,” Thea suggested hopefully.

Ray gave her back the card. “He’s headed in the wrong direction. What
does he want to get back into a grass country for? Now, there are lots
of good live towns down on the Santa Fé, and everybody down there is
musical. He could always get a job playing in saloons if he was dead
broke. I’ve figured out that I’ve got no years of my life to waste in a
Methodist country where they raise pork.”

“We must stop on our way back and show this card to Mrs. Kohler. She
misses him so.”

“By the way, Thee, I hear the old woman goes to church every Sunday to
hear you sing. Fritz tells me he has to wait till two o’clock for his
Sunday dinner these days. The church people ought to give you credit
for that, when they go for you.”

Thea shook her head and spoke in a tone of resignation. “They’ll always
go for me, just as they did for Wunsch. It wasn’t because he drank they
went for him; not really. It was something else.”

“You want to salt your money down, Thee, and go to Chicago and take
some lessons. Then you come back, and wear a long feather and high
heels and put on a few airs, and that’ll fix ’em. That’s what they
like.”

“I’ll never have money enough to go to Chicago. Mother meant to lend me
some, I think, but now they’ve got hard times back in Nebraska, and her
farm don’t bring her in anything. Takes all the tenant can raise to pay
the taxes. Don’t let’s talk about that. You promised to tell me about
the play you went to see in Denver.”

Any one would have liked to hear Ray’s simple and clear account of the
performance he had seen at the Tabor Grand Opera House—Maggie Mitchell
in _Little Barefoot_—and any one would have liked to watch his kind
face. Ray looked his best out of doors, when his thick red hands were
covered by gloves, and the dull red of his sunburned face somehow
seemed right in the light and wind. He looked better, too, with his hat
on; his hair was thin and dry, with no particular color or character,
“regular Willy-boy hair,” as he himself described it. His eyes were
pale beside the reddish bronze of his skin. They had the faded look
often seen in the eyes of men who have lived much in the sun and wind
and who have been accustomed to train their vision upon distant
objects.

Ray realized that Thea’s life was dull and exacting, and that she
missed Wunsch. He knew she worked hard, that she put up with a great
many little annoyances, and that her duties as a teacher separated her
more than ever from the boys and girls of her own age. He did
everything he could to provide recreation for her. He brought her candy
and magazines and pineapples—of which she was very fond—from Denver,
and kept his eyes and ears open for anything that might interest her.
He was, of course, living for Thea. He had thought it all out carefully
and had made up his mind just when he would speak to her. When she was
seventeen, then he would tell her his plan and ask her to marry him. He
would be willing to wait two, or even three years, until she was
twenty, if she thought best. By that time he would surely have got in
on something: copper, oil, gold, silver, sheep,—something.

Meanwhile, it was pleasure enough to feel that she depended on him more
and more, that she leaned upon his steady kindness. He never broke
faith with himself about her; he never hinted to her of his hopes for
the future, never suggested that she might be more intimately
confidential with him, or talked to her of the thing he thought about
so constantly. He had the chivalry which is perhaps the proudest
possession of his race. He had never embarrassed her by so much as a
glance. Sometimes, when they drove out to the sand hills, he let his
left arm lie along the back of the buggy seat, but it never came any
nearer to Thea than that, never touched her. He often turned to her a
face full of pride, and frank admiration, but his glance was never so
intimate or so penetrating as Dr. Archie’s. His blue eyes were clear
and shallow, friendly, uninquiring. He rested Thea because he was so
different; because, though he often told her interesting things, he
never set lively fancies going in her head; because he never
misunderstood her, and because he never, by any chance, for a single
instant, understood her! Yes, with Ray she was safe; by him she would
never be discovered!

XVI

The pleasantest experience Thea had that summer was a trip that she and
her mother made to Denver in Ray Kennedy’s caboose. Mrs. Kronborg had
been looking forward to this excursion for a long while, but as Ray
never knew at what hour his freight would leave Moonstone, it was
difficult to arrange. The call-boy was as likely to summon him to start
on his run at twelve o’clock midnight as at twelve o’clock noon. The
first week in June started out with all the scheduled trains running on
time, and a light freight business. Tuesday evening Ray, after
consulting with the dispatcher, stopped at the Kronborgs’ front gate to
tell Mrs. Kronborg—who was helping Tillie water the flowers—that if she
and Thea could be at the depot at eight o’clock the next morning, he
thought he could promise them a pleasant ride and get them into Denver
before nine o’clock in the evening. Mrs. Kronborg told him cheerfully,
across the fence, that she would “take him up on it,” and Ray hurried
back to the yards to scrub out his car.

The one complaint Ray’s brakemen had to make of him was that he was too
fussy about his caboose. His former brakeman had asked to be
transferred because, he said, “Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an
old maid about her bird-cage.” Joe Giddy, who was braking with Ray now,
called him “the bride,” because he kept the caboose and bunks so clean.

It was properly the brakeman’s business to keep the car clean, but when
Ray got back to the depot, Giddy was nowhere to be found. Muttering
that all his brakemen seemed to consider him “easy,” Ray went down to
his car alone. He built a fire in the stove and put water on to heat
while he got into his overalls and jumper. Then he set to work with a
scrubbing-brush and plenty of soap and “cleaner.” He scrubbed the floor
and seats, blacked the stove, put clean sheets on the bunks, and then
began to demolish Giddy’s picture gallery. Ray found that his brakemen
were likely to have what he termed “a taste for the nude in art,” and
Giddy was no exception. Ray took down half a dozen girls in tights and
ballet skirts,—premiums for cigarette coupons,—and some racy calendars
advertising saloons and sporting clubs, which had cost Giddy both time
and trouble; he even removed Giddy’s particular pet, a naked girl lying
on a couch with her knee carelessly poised in the air. Underneath the
picture was printed the title, “The Odalisque.” Giddy was under the
happy delusion that this title meant something wicked,—there was a
wicked look about the consonants,—but Ray, of course, had looked it up,
and Giddy was indebted to the dictionary for the privilege of keeping
his lady. If “odalisque” had been what Ray called an objectionable
word, he would have thrown the picture out in the first place. Ray even
took down a picture of Mrs. Langtry in evening dress, because it was
entitled the “Jersey Lily,” and because there was a small head of
Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in one corner. Albert Edward’s
conduct was a popular subject of discussion among railroad men in those
days, and as Ray pulled the tacks out of this lithograph he felt more
indignant with the English than ever. He deposited all these pictures
under the mattress of Giddy’s bunk, and stood admiring his clean car in
the lamplight; the walls now exhibited only a wheatfield, advertising
agricultural implements, a map of Colorado, and some pictures of
race-horses and hunting-dogs. At this moment Giddy, freshly shaved and
shampooed, his shirt shining with the highest polish known to Chinese
laundrymen, his straw hat tipped over his right eye, thrust his head in
at the door.

“What in hell—” he brought out furiously. His good humored, sunburned
face seemed fairly to swell with amazement and anger.

“That’s all right, Giddy,” Ray called in a conciliatory tone. “Nothing
injured. I’ll put ’em all up again as I found ’em. Going to take some
ladies down in the car to-morrow.”

Giddy scowled. He did not dispute the propriety of Ray’s measures, if
there were to be ladies on board, but he felt injured. “I suppose
you’ll expect me to behave like a Y.M.C.A. secretary,” he growled. “I
can’t do my work and serve tea at the same time.”

“No need to have a tea-party,” said Ray with determined cheerfulness.
“Mrs. Kronborg will bring the lunch, and it will be a darned good one.”

Giddy lounged against the car, holding his cigar between two thick
fingers. “Then I guess she’ll get it,” he observed knowingly. “I don’t
think your musical friend is much on the grub-box. Has to keep her
hands white to tickle the ivories.” Giddy had nothing against Thea, but
he felt cantankerous and wanted to get a rise out of Kennedy.

“Every man to his own job,” Ray replied agreeably, pulling his white
shirt on over his head.

Giddy emitted smoke disdainfully. “I suppose so. The man that gets her
will have to wear an apron and bake the pancakes. Well, some men like
to mess about the kitchen.” He paused, but Ray was intent on getting
into his clothes as quickly as possible. Giddy thought he could go a
little further. “Of course, I don’t dispute your right to haul women in
this car if you want to; but personally, so far as I’m concerned, I’d a
good deal rather drink a can of tomatoes and do without the women _and_
their lunch. I was never much enslaved to hard-boiled eggs, anyhow.”

“You’ll eat ’em to-morrow, all the same.” Ray’s tone had a steely
glitter as he jumped out of the car, and Giddy stood aside to let him
pass. He knew that Kennedy’s next reply would be delivered by hand. He
had once seen Ray beat up a nasty fellow for insulting a Mexican woman
who helped about the grub-car in the work train, and his fists had
worked like two steel hammers. Giddy wasn’t looking for trouble.

At eight o’clock the next morning Ray greeted his ladies and helped
them into the car. Giddy had put on a clean shirt and yellow pig-skin
gloves and was whistling his best. He considered Kennedy a fluke as a
ladies’ man, and if there was to be a party, the honors had to be done
by some one who wasn’t a blacksmith at small-talk. Giddy had, as Ray
sarcastically admitted, “a local reputation as a jollier,” and he was
fluent in gallant speeches of a not too-veiled nature. He insisted that
Thea should take his seat in the cupola, opposite Ray’s, where she
could look out over the country. Thea told him, as she clambered up,
that she cared a good deal more about riding in that seat than about
going to Denver. Ray was never so companionable and easy as when he sat
chatting in the lookout of his little house on wheels. Good stories
came to him, and interesting recollections. Thea had a great respect
for the reports he had to write out, and for the telegrams that were
handed to him at stations; for all the knowledge and experience it must
take to run a freight train.

Giddy, down in the car, in the pauses of his work, made himself
agreeable to Mrs. Kronborg.

“It’s a great rest to be where my family can’t get at me, Mr. Giddy,”
she told him. “I thought you and Ray might have some housework here for
me to look after, but I couldn’t improve any on this car.”

“Oh, we like to keep her neat,” returned Giddy glibly, winking up at
Ray’s expressive back. “If you want to see a clean ice-box, look at
this one. Yes, Kennedy always carries fresh cream to eat on his
oatmeal. I’m not particular. The tin cow’s good enough for me.”

“Most of you boys smoke so much that all victuals taste alike to you,”
said Mrs. Kronborg. “I’ve got no religious scruples against smoking,
but I couldn’t take as much interest cooking for a man that used
tobacco. I guess it’s all right for bachelors who have to eat round.”

Mrs. Kronborg took off her hat and veil and made herself comfortable.
She seldom had an opportunity to be idle, and she enjoyed it. She could
sit for hours and watch the sage-hens fly up and the jack-rabbits dart
away from the track, without being bored. She wore a tan bombazine
dress, made very plainly, and carried a roomy, worn,
mother-of-the-family handbag.

Ray Kennedy always insisted that Mrs. Kronborg was “a fine-looking
lady,” but this was not the common opinion in Moonstone. Ray had lived
long enough among the Mexicans to dislike fussiness, to feel that there
was something more attractive in ease of manner than in absentminded
concern about hairpins and dabs of lace. He had learned to think that
the way a woman stood, moved, sat in her chair, looked at you, was more
important than the absence of wrinkles from her skirt. Ray had, indeed,
such unusual perceptions in some directions, that one could not help
wondering what he would have been if he had ever, as he said, had “half
a chance.”

He was right; Mrs. Kronborg was a fine-looking woman. She was short and
square, but her head was a real head, not a mere jerky termination of
the body. It had some individuality apart from hats and hairpins. Her
hair, Moonstone women admitted, would have been very pretty “on anybody
else.” Frizzy bangs were worn then, but Mrs. Kronborg always dressed
her hair in the same way, parted in the middle, brushed smoothly back
from her low, white forehead, pinned loosely on the back of her head in
two thick braids. It was growing gray about the temples, but after the
manner of yellow hair it seemed only to have grown paler there, and had
taken on a color like that of English primroses. Her eyes were clear
and untroubled; her face smooth and calm, and, as Ray said, “strong.”

Thea and Ray, up in the sunny cupola, were laughing and talking. Ray
got great pleasure out of seeing her face there in the little box where
he so often imagined it. They were crossing a plateau where great red
sandstone boulders lay about, most of them much wider at the top than
at the base, so that they looked like great toadstools.

“The sand has been blowing against them for a good many hundred years,”
Ray explained, directing Thea’s eyes with his gloved hand. “You see the
sand blows low, being so heavy, and cuts them out underneath. Wind and
sand are pretty high-class architects. That’s the principle of most of
the Cliff-Dweller remains down at Canyon de Chelly. The sandstorms had
dug out big depressions in the face of a cliff, and the Indians built
their houses back in that depression.”

“You told me that before, Ray, and of course you know. But the
geography says their houses were cut out of the face of the living
rock, and I like that better.”

Ray sniffed. “What nonsense does get printed! It’s enough to give a man
disrespect for learning. How could them Indians cut houses out of the
living rock, when they knew nothing about the art of forging metals?”
Ray leaned back in his chair, swung his foot, and looked thoughtful and
happy. He was in one of his favorite fields of speculation, and nothing
gave him more pleasure than talking these things over with Thea
Kronborg. “I’ll tell you, Thee, if those old fellows had learned to
work metals once, your ancient Egyptians and Assyrians wouldn’t have
beat them very much. Whatever they did do, they did well. Their
masonry’s standing there to-day, the corners as true as the Denver
Capitol. They were clever at most everything but metals; and that one
failure kept them from getting across. It was the quicksand that
swallowed ’em up, as a race. I guess civilization proper began when men
mastered metals.”

Ray was not vain about his bookish phrases. He did not use them to show
off, but because they seemed to him more adequate than colloquial
speech. He felt strongly about these things, and groped for words, as
he said, “to express himself.” He had the lamentable American belief
that “expression” is obligatory. He still carried in his trunk, among
the unrelated possessions of a railroad man, a notebook on the
title-page of which was written “Impressions on First Viewing the Grand
Canyon, Ray H. Kennedy.” The pages of that book were like a
battlefield; the laboring author had fallen back from metaphor after
metaphor, abandoned position after position. He would have admitted
that the art of forging metals was nothing to this treacherous business
of recording impressions, in which the material you were so full of
vanished mysteriously under your striving hand. “Escaping steam!” he
had said to himself, the last time he tried to read that notebook.

Thea didn’t mind Ray’s travel-lecture expressions. She dodged them,
unconsciously, as she did her father’s professional palaver. The light
in Ray’s pale-blue eyes and the feeling in his voice more than made up
for the stiffness of his language.

“Were the Cliff-Dwellers really clever with their hands, Ray, or do you
always have to make allowance and say, ‘That was pretty good for an
Indian’?” she asked.

Ray went down into the car to give some instructions to Giddy. “Well,”
he said when he returned, “about the aborigines: once or twice I’ve
been with some fellows who were cracking burial mounds. Always felt a
little ashamed of it, but we did pull out some remarkable things. We
got some pottery out whole; seemed pretty fine to me. I guess their
women were their artists. We found lots of old shoes and sandals made
out of yucca fiber, neat and strong; and feather blankets, too.”

“Feather blankets? You never told me about them.”

“Didn’t I? The old fellows—or the squaws—wove a close netting of yucca
fiber, and then tied on little bunches of down feathers, overlapping,
just the way feathers grow on a bird. Some of them were feathered on
both sides. You can’t get anything warmer than that, now, can you?—or
prettier. What I like about those old aborigines is, that they got all
their ideas from nature.”

Thea laughed. “That means you’re going to say something about girls’
wearing corsets. But some of your Indians flattened their babies’
heads, and that’s worse than wearing corsets.”

“Give me an Indian girl’s figure for beauty,” Ray insisted. “And a girl
with a voice like yours ought to have plenty of lung-action. But you
know my sentiments on that subject. I was going to tell you about the
handsomest thing we ever looted out of those burial mounds. It was on a
woman, too, I regret to say. She was preserved as perfect as any mummy
that ever came out of the pyramids. She had a big string of turquoises
around her neck, and she was wrapped in a fox-fur cloak, lined with
little yellow feathers that must have come off wild canaries. Can you
beat that, now? The fellow that claimed it sold it to a Boston man for
a hundred and fifty dollars.”

Thea looked at him admiringly. “Oh, Ray, and didn’t you get anything
off her, to remember her by, even? She must have been a princess.”

Ray took a wallet from the pocket of the coat that was hanging beside
him, and drew from it a little lump wrapped in worn tissue paper. In a
moment a stone, soft and blue as a robin’s egg, lay in the hard palm of
his hand. It was a turquoise, rubbed smooth in the Indian finish, which
is so much more beautiful than the incongruous high polish the white
man gives that tender stone. “I got this from her necklace. See the
hole where the string went through? You know how the Indians drill
them? Work the drill with their teeth. You like it, don’t you? They’re
just right for you. Blue and yellow are the Swedish colors.” Ray looked
intently at her head, bent over his hand, and then gave his whole
attention to the track.

“I’ll tell you, Thee,” he began after a pause, “I’m going to form a
camping party one of these days and persuade your _padre_ to take you
and your mother down to that country, and we’ll live in the rock
houses—they’re as comfortable as can be—and start the cook fires up in
’em once again. I’ll go into the burial mounds and get you more
keepsakes than any girl ever had before.” Ray had planned such an
expedition for his wedding journey, and it made his heart thump to see
how Thea’s eyes kindled when he talked about it. “I’ve learned more
down there about what makes history,” he went on, “than in all the
books I’ve ever read. When you sit in the sun and let your heels hang
out of a doorway that drops a thousand feet, ideas come to you. You
begin to feel what the human race has been up against from the
beginning. There’s something mighty elevating about those old
habitations. You feel like it’s up to you to do your best, on account
of those fellows having it so hard. You feel like you owed them
something.”

At Wassiwappa, Ray got instructions to sidetrack until Thirty-six went
by. After reading the message, he turned to his guests. “I’m afraid
this will hold us up about two hours, Mrs. Kronborg, and we won’t get
into Denver till near midnight.”

“That won’t trouble me,” said Mrs. Kronborg contentedly. “They know me
at the Y.W.C.A., and they’ll let me in any time of night. I came to see
the country, not to make time. I’ve always wanted to get out at this
white place and look around, and now I’ll have a chance. What makes it
so white?”

“Some kind of chalky rock.” Ray sprang to the ground and gave Mrs.
Kronborg his hand. “You can get soil of any color in Colorado; match
most any ribbon.”

While Ray was getting his train on to a side track, Mrs. Kronborg
strolled off to examine the post-office and station house; these, with
the water tank, made up the town. The station agent “batched” and
raised chickens. He ran out to meet Mrs. Kronborg, clutched at her
feverishly, and began telling her at once how lonely he was and what
bad luck he was having with his poultry. She went to his chicken yard
with him, and prescribed for gapes.

Wassiwappa seemed a dreary place enough to people who looked for
verdure, a brilliant place to people who liked color. Beside the
station house there was a blue-grass plot, protected by a red plank
fence, and six fly-bitten box-elder trees, not much larger than bushes,
were kept alive by frequent hosings from the water plug. Over the
windows some dusty morning-glory vines were trained on strings. All the
country about was broken up into low chalky hills, which were so
intensely white, and spotted so evenly with sage, that they looked like
white leopards crouching. White dust powdered everything, and the light
was so intense that the station agent usually wore blue glasses. Behind
the station there was a water course, which roared in flood time, and a
basin in the soft white rock where a pool of alkali water flashed in
the sun like a mirror. The agent looked almost as sick as his chickens,
and Mrs. Kronborg at once invited him to lunch with her party. He had,
he confessed, a distaste for his own cooking, and lived mainly on soda
crackers and canned beef. He laughed apologetically when Mrs. Kronborg
said she guessed she’d look about for a shady place to eat lunch.

She walked up the track to the water tank, and there, in the narrow
shadows cast by the uprights on which the tank stood, she found two
tramps. They sat up and stared at her, heavy with sleep. When she asked
them where they were going, they told her “to the coast.” They rested
by day and traveled by night; walked the ties unless they could steal a
ride, they said; adding that “these Western roads were getting strict.”
Their faces were blistered, their eyes blood-shot, and their shoes
looked fit only for the trash pile.

“I suppose you’re hungry?” Mrs. Kronborg asked. “I suppose you both
drink?” she went on thoughtfully, not censoriously.

The huskier of the two hoboes, a bushy, bearded fellow, rolled his eyes
and said, “I wonder?” But the other, who was old and spare, with a
sharp nose and watery eyes, sighed. “Some has one affliction, some
another,” he said.

Mrs. Kronborg reflected. “Well,” she said at last, “you can’t get
liquor here, anyway. I am going to ask you to vacate, because I want to
have a little picnic under this tank for the freight crew that brought
me along. I wish I had lunch enough to provide you, but I ain’t. The
station agent says he gets his provisions over there at the post office
store, and if you are hungry you can get some canned stuff there.” She
opened her handbag and gave each of the tramps a half-dollar.

The old man wiped his eyes with his forefinger. “Thank ’ee, ma’am. A
can of tomatters will taste pretty good to me. I wasn’t always walkin’
ties; I had a good job in Cleveland before—”

The hairy tramp turned on him fiercely. “Aw, shut up on that, grandpaw!
Ain’t you got no gratitude? What do you want to hand the lady that
fur?”

The old man hung his head and turned away. As he went off, his comrade
looked after him and said to Mrs. Kronborg: “It’s true, what he says.
He had a job in the car shops; but he had bad luck.” They both limped
away toward the store, and Mrs. Kronborg sighed. She was not afraid of
tramps. She always talked to them, and never turned one away. She hated
to think how many of them there were, crawling along the tracks over
that vast country.

Her reflections were cut short by Ray and Giddy and Thea, who came
bringing the lunch box and water bottles. Although there was not shadow
enough to accommodate all the party at once, the air under the tank was
distinctly cooler than the surrounding air, and the drip made a
pleasant sound in that breathless noon. The station agent ate as if he
had never been fed before, apologizing every time he took another piece
of fried chicken. Giddy was unabashed before the devilled eggs of which
he had spoken so scornfully last night. After lunch the men lit their
pipes and lay back against the uprights that supported the tank.

“This is the sunny side of railroading, all right,” Giddy drawled
luxuriously.

“You fellows grumble too much,” said Mrs. Kronborg as she corked the
pickle jar. “Your job has its drawbacks, but it don’t tie you down. Of
course there’s the risk; but I believe a man’s watched over, and he
can’t be hurt on the railroad or anywhere else if it’s intended he
shouldn’t be.”

Giddy laughed. “Then the trains must be operated by fellows the Lord
has it in for, Mrs. Kronborg. They figure it out that a railroad man’s
only due to last eleven years; then it’s his turn to be smashed.”

“That’s a dark Providence, I don’t deny,” Mrs. Kronborg admitted. “But
there’s lots of things in life that’s hard to understand.”

“I guess!” murmured Giddy, looking off at the spotted white hills.

Ray smoked in silence, watching Thea and her mother clear away the
lunch. He was thinking that Mrs. Kronborg had in her face the same
serious look that Thea had; only hers was calm and satisfied, and
Thea’s was intense and questioning. But in both it was a large kind of
look, that was not all the time being broken up and convulsed by
trivial things. They both carried their heads like Indian women, with a
kind of noble unconsciousness. He got so tired of women who were always
nodding and jerking; apologizing, deprecating, coaxing, insinuating
with their heads.

When Ray’s party set off again that afternoon the sun beat fiercely
into the cupola, and Thea curled up in one of the seats at the back of
the car and had a nap.

As the short twilight came on, Giddy took a turn in the cupola, and Ray
came down and sat with Thea on the rear platform of the caboose and
watched the darkness come in soft waves over the plain. They were now
about thirty miles from Denver, and the mountains looked very near. The
great toothed wall behind which the sun had gone down now separated
into four distinct ranges, one behind the other. They were a very pale
blue, a color scarcely stronger than wood smoke, and the sunset had
left bright streaks in the snow-filled gorges. In the clear,
yellow-streaked sky the stars were coming out, flickering like newly
lighted lamps, growing steadier and more golden as the sky darkened and
the land beneath them fell into complete shadow. It was a cool, restful
darkness that was not black or forbidding, but somehow open and free;
the night of high plains where there is no moistness or mistiness in
the atmosphere.

The Song of Hiawatha

Henry W. Longfellow

CONTENTS

Introductory Note
Introduction
I. The Peace-Pipe
II. The Four Winds
III. Hiawatha’s Childhood
IV. Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis
V. Hiawatha’s Fasting
VI. Hiawatha’s Friends
VII. Hiawatha’s Sailing
VIII. Hiawatha’s Fishing
IX. Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather
X. Hiawatha’s Wooing
XI. Hiawatha’s Wedding-Feast
XII. The Son of the Evening Star
XIII. Blessing the Corn-Fields
XIV. Picture-Writing
XV. Hiawatha’s Lamentation
XVI. Pau-Puk-Keewis
XVII. The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis
XVIII. The Death of Kwasind
XIX. The Ghosts
XX. The Famine
XXI. The White Man’s Foot
XXII. Hiawatha’s Departure
Vocabulary

Introductory Note

The Song of Hiawatha is based on the legends and stories of many North
American Indian tribes, but especially those of the Ojibway Indians of
northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They were collected by
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the reknowned historian, pioneer explorer, and
geologist. He was superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from
1836 to 1841.

Schoolcraft married Jane, O-bah-bahm-wawa-ge-zhe-go-qua (The Woman of
the Sound Which the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky), Johnston. Jane
was a daughter of John Johnston, an early Irish fur trader, and
O-shau-gus-coday-way-qua (The Woman of the Green Prairie), who was a
daughter of Waub-o-jeeg (The White Fisher), who was Chief of the
Ojibway tribe at La Pointe, Wisconsin.

Jane and her mother are credited with having researched, authenticated,
and compiled much of the material Schoolcraft included in his Algic
Researches (1839) and a revision published in 1856 as The Myth of
Hiawatha. It was this latter revision that Longfellow used as the basis
for The Song of Hiawatha.

Longfellow began Hiawatha on June 25, 1854, he completed it on March
29, 1855, and it was published November 10, 1855. As soon as the poem
was published its popularity was assured. However, it also was severely
criticized as a plagiary of the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. Longfellow
made no secret of the fact that he had used the meter of the Kalevala;
but as for the legends, he openly gave credit to Schoolcraft in his
notes to the poem.

I would add a personal note here. My father’s roots include Ojibway
Indians: his mother, Margaret Caroline Davenport, was a daughter of
Susan des Carreaux, O-gee-em-a-qua (The Chief Woman), Davenport whose
mother was a daughter of Chief Waub-o-jeeg. Finally, my mother used to
rock me to sleep reading portions of Hiawatha to me, especially:

“Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
Little, flitting, white-fire insect
Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
Light me with your little candle,
Ere upon my bed I lay me,
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!”

Woodrow W. Morris
April 1, 1991

The Song of Hiawatha

Introduction

Should you ask me, whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions,
With the odors of the forest
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?

I should answer, I should tell you,
“From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer.”

Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
“In the bird’s-nests of the forest,
In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoofprint of the bison,
In the eyry of the eagle!

“All the wild-fowl sang them to him,
In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes;
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!”

If still further you should ask me,
Saying, “Who was Nawadaha?
Tell us of this Nawadaha,”
I should answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as follow.

“In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha.
Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing pine-trees,
Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.

“And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley.

“There he sang of Hiawatha,
Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
Sang his wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people!”

Ye who love the haunts of Nature,
Love the sunshine of the meadow,
Love the shadow of the forest,
Love the wind among the branches,
And the rain-shower and the snow-storm,
And the rushing of great rivers
Through their palisades of pine-trees,
And the thunder in the mountains,
Whose innumerable echoes
Flap like eagles in their eyries;–
Listen to these wild traditions,
To this Song of Hiawatha!

Ye who love a nation’s legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
That like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish
Whether they are sung or spoken;–
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To this Song of Hiawatha!

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even savage bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
For the good they comprehend not,
That the feeble hands and helpless,
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God’s right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and strengthened;–
Listen to this simple story,
To this Song of Hiawatha!

Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
Through the green lanes of the country,
Where the tangled barberry-bushes
Hang their tufts of crimson berries
Over stone walls gray with mosses,
Pause by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter;
Stay and read this rude inscription,
Read this Song of Hiawatha!

I
The Peace-Pipe

On the Mountains of the Prairie,
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
He the Master of Life, descending,
On the red crags of the quarry
Stood erect, and called the nations,
Called the tribes of men together.

From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O’er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.
And the Spirit, stooping earthward,
With his finger on the meadow
Traced a winding pathway for it,
Saying to it, “Run in this way!”

From the red stone of the quarry
With his hand he broke a fragment,
Moulded it into a pipe-head,
Shaped and fashioned it with figures;
From the margin of the river
Took a long reed for a pipe-stem,
With its dark green leaves upon it;
Filled the pipe with bark of willow,
With the bark of the red willow;
Breathed upon the neighboring forest,
Made its great boughs chafe together,
Till in flame they burst and kindled;
And erect upon the mountains,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe,
As a signal to the nations.

And the smoke rose slowly, slowly,
Through the tranquil air of morning,
First a single line of darkness,
Then a denser, bluer vapor,
Then a snow-white cloud unfolding,
Like the tree-tops of the forest,
Ever rising, rising, rising,
Till it touched the top of heaven,
Till it broke against the heaven,
And rolled outward all around it.

From the Vale of Tawasentha,
From the Valley of Wyoming,
From the groves of Tuscaloosa,
From the far-off Rocky Mountains,
From the Northern lakes and rivers
All the tribes beheld the signal,
Saw the distant smoke ascending,
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe.

And the Prophets of the nations
Said: “Behold it, the Pukwana!
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,
Bending like a wand of willow,
Waving like a hand that beckons,
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
Calls the tribes of men together,
Calls the warriors to his council!”

Down the rivers, o’er the prairies,
Came the warriors of the nations,
Came the Delawares and Mohawks,
Came the Choctaws and Camanches,
Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet,
Came the Pawnees and Omahas,

Came the Mandans and Dacotahs,
Came the Hurons and Ojibways,
All the warriors drawn together
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe,
To the Mountains of the Prairie,
To the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,

And they stood there on the meadow,
With their weapons and their war-gear,
Painted like the leaves of Autumn,
Painted like the sky of morning,
Wildly glaring at each other;
In their faces stern defiance,
In their hearts the feuds of ages,
The hereditary hatred,
The ancestral thirst of vengeance.

Gitche Manito, the mighty,
The creator of the nations,
Looked upon them with compassion,
With paternal love and pity;
Looked upon their wrath and wrangling
But as quarrels among children,
But as feuds and fights of children!

Over them he stretched his right hand,
To subdue their stubborn natures,
To allay their thirst and fever,
By the shadow of his right hand;
Spake to them with voice majestic
As the sound of far-off waters,
Falling into deep abysses,
Warning, chiding, spake in this wise:

“O my children! my poor children!
Listen to the words of wisdom,
Listen to the words of warning,
From the lips of the Great Spirit,
From the Master of Life, who made you!

“I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
I have given you bear and bison,
I have given you roe and reindeer,
I have given you brant and beaver,
Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,
Filled the rivers full of fishes:
Why then are you not contented?
Why then will you hunt each other?

“I am weary of your quarrels,
Weary of your wars and bloodshed,
Weary of your prayers for vengeance,
Of your wranglings and dissensions;
All your strength is in your union,
All your danger is in discord;
Therefore be at peace henceforward,
And as brothers live together.

“I will send a Prophet to you,
A Deliverer of the nations,
Who shall guide you and shall teach you,
Who shall toil and suffer with you.
If you listen to his counsels,
You will multiply and prosper;
If his warnings pass unheeded,
You will fade away and perish!

“Bathe now in the stream before you,
Wash the war-paint from your faces,
Wash the blood-stains from your fingers,
Bury your war-clubs and your weapons,
Break the red stone from this quarry,
Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes,
Take the reeds that grow beside you,
Deck them with your brightest feathers,
Smoke the calumet together,
And as brothers live henceforward!”

Then upon the ground the warriors
Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin,
Threw their weapons and their war-gear,
Leaped into the rushing river,
Washed the war-paint from their faces.
Clear above them flowed the water,
Clear and limpid from the footprints
Of the Master of Life descending;
Dark below them flowed the water,
Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson,
As if blood were mingled with it!

From the river came the warriors,
Clean and washed from all their war-paint;
On the banks their clubs they buried,
Buried all their warlike weapons.
Gitche Manito, the mighty,
The Great Spirit, the creator,
Smiled upon his helpless children!

And in silence all the warriors
Broke the red stone of the quarry,
Smoothed and formed it into Peace-Pipes,
Broke the long reeds by the river,
Decked them with their brightest feathers,
And departed each one homeward,
While the Master of Life, ascending,
Through the opening of cloud-curtains,
Through the doorways of the heaven,
Vanished from before their faces,
In the smoke that rolled around him,
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe!

II
The Four Winds

“Honor be to Mudjekeewis!”
Cried the warriors, cried the old men,
When he came in triumph homeward
With the sacred Belt of Wampum,
From the regions of the North-Wind,
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
From the land of the White Rabbit.

He had stolen the Belt of Wampum
From the neck of Mishe-Mokwa,
From the Great Bear of the mountains,
From the terror of the nations,
As he lay asleep and cumbrous
On the summit of the mountains,
Like a rock with mosses on it,
Spotted brown and gray with mosses.

Silently he stole upon him
Till the red nails of the monster
Almost touched him, almost scared him,
Till the hot breath of his nostrils
Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis,
As he drew the Belt of Wampum
Over the round ears, that heard not,
Over the small eyes, that saw not,
Over the long nose and nostrils,
The black muffle of the nostrils,
Out of which the heavy breathing
Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis.

Then he swung aloft his war-club,
Shouted loud and long his war-cry,
Smote the mighty Mishe-Mokwa
In the middle of the forehead,
Right between the eyes he smote him.

With the heavy blow bewildered,
Rose the Great Bear of the mountains;
But his knees beneath him trembled,
And he whimpered like a woman,
As he reeled and staggered forward,
As he sat upon his haunches;
And the mighty Mudjekeewis,
Standing fearlessly before him,
Taunted him in loud derision,
Spake disdainfully in this wise:

“Hark you, Bear! you are a coward;
And no Brave, as you pretended;
Else you would not cry and whimper
Like a miserable woman!
Bear! you know our tribes are hostile,
Long have been at war together;
Now you find that we are strongest,
You go sneaking in the forest,
You go hiding in the mountains!
Had you conquered me in battle
Not a groan would I have uttered;
But you, Bear! sit here and whimper,
And disgrace your tribe by crying,
Like a wretched Shaugodaya,
Like a cowardly old woman!”

Then again he raised his war-club,
Smote again the Mishe-Mokwa
In the middle of his forehead,
Broke his skull, as ice is broken
When one goes to fish in Winter.
Thus was slain the Mishe-Mokwa,
He the Great Bear of the mountains,
He the terror of the nations.

“Honor be to Mudjekeewis!”
With a shout exclaimed the people,
“Honor be to Mudjekeewis!
Henceforth he shall be the West-Wind,
And hereafter and forever
Shall he hold supreme dominion
Over all the winds of heaven.
Call him no more Mudjekeewis,
Call him Kabeyun, the West-Wind!”

Thus was Mudjekeewis chosen
Father of the Winds of Heaven.
For himself he kept the West-Wind,
Gave the others to his children;
Unto Wabun gave the East-Wind,
Gave the South to Shawondasee,
And the North-Wind, wild and cruel,
To the fierce Kabibonokka.

Young and beautiful was Wabun;
He it was who brought the morning,
He it was whose silver arrows
Chased the dark o’er hill and valley;
He it was whose cheeks were painted
With the brightest streaks of crimson,
And whose voice awoke the village,
Called the deer, and called the hunter.

Lonely in the sky was Wabun;
Though the birds sang gayly to him,
Though the wild-flowers of the meadow
Filled the air with odors for him;
Though the forests and the rivers
Sang and shouted at his coming,
Still his heart was sad within him,
For he was alone in heaven.

But one morning, gazing earthward,
While the village still was sleeping,
And the fog lay on the river,
Like a ghost, that goes at sunrise,
He beheld a maiden walking
All alone upon a meadow,
Gathering water-flags and rushes
By a river in the meadow.

Every morning, gazing earthward,
Still the first thing he beheld there
Was her blue eyes looking at him,
Two blue lakes among the rushes.
And he loved the lonely maiden,
Who thus waited for his coming;
For they both were solitary,
She on earth and he in heaven.

And he wooed her with caresses,
Wooed her with his smile of sunshine,
With his flattering words he wooed her,
With his sighing and his singing,
Gentlest whispers in the branches,
Softest music, sweetest odors,
Till he drew her to his bosom,
Folded in his robes of crimson,
Till into a star he changed her,
Trembling still upon his bosom;
And forever in the heavens
They are seen together walking,
Wabun and the Wabun-Annung,
Wabun and the Star of Morning.

But the fierce Kabibonokka
Had his dwelling among icebergs,
In the everlasting snow-drifts,
In the kingdom of Wabasso,
In the land of the White Rabbit.
He it was whose hand in Autumn
Painted all the trees with scarlet,
Stained the leaves with red and yellow;
He it was who sent the snow-flake,
Sifting, hissing through the forest,
Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers,
Drove the loon and sea-gull southward,
Drove the cormorant and curlew
To their nests of sedge and sea-tang
In the realms of Shawondasee.

Once the fierce Kabibonokka
Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts
From his home among the icebergs,
And his hair, with snow besprinkled,
Streamed behind him like a river,
Like a black and wintry river,
As he howled and hurried southward,
Over frozen lakes and moorlands.

There among the reeds and rushes
Found he Shingebis, the diver,
Trailing strings of fish behind him,
O’er the frozen fens and moorlands,
Lingering still among the moorlands,
Though his tribe had long departed
To the land of Shawondasee.

Cried the fierce Kabibonokka,
“Who is this that dares to brave me?
Dares to stay in my dominions,
When the Wawa has departed,
When the wild-goose has gone southward,
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Long ago departed southward?
I will go into his wigwam,
I will put his smouldering fire out!”

And at night Kabibonokka,
To the lodge came wild and wailing,
Heaped the snow in drifts about it,
Shouted down into the smoke-flue,
Shook the lodge-poles in his fury,
Flapped the curtain of the door-way.
Shingebis, the diver, feared not,
Shingebis, the diver, cared not;
Four great logs had he for firewood,
One for each moon of the winter,
And for food the fishes served him.
By his blazing fire he sat there,
Warm and merry, eating, laughing,
Singing, “O Kabibonokka,
You are but my fellow-mortal!”

Then Kabibonokka entered,
And though Shingebis, the diver,
Felt his presence by the coldness,
Felt his icy breath upon him,
Still he did not cease his singing,
Still he did not leave his laughing,
Only turned the log a little,
Only made the fire burn brighter,
Made the sparks fly up the smoke-flue.

From Kabibonokka’s forehead,
From his snow-besprinkled tresses,
Drops of sweat fell fast and heavy,
Making dints upon the ashes,
As along the eaves of lodges,
As from drooping boughs of hemlock,
Drips the melting snow in spring-time,
Making hollows in the snow-drifts.

Till at last he rose defeated,
Could not bear the heat and laughter,
Could not bear the merry singing,
But rushed headlong through the door-way,
Stamped upon the crusted snow-drifts,
Stamped upon the lakes and rivers,
Made the snow upon them harder,
Made the ice upon them thicker,
Challenged Shingebis, the diver,
To come forth and wrestle with him,
To come forth and wrestle naked
On the frozen fens and moorlands.

Forth went Shingebis, the diver,
Wrestled all night with the North-Wind,
Wrestled naked on the moorlands
With the fierce Kabibonokka,
Till his panting breath grew fainter,
Till his frozen grasp grew feebler,
Till he reeled and staggered backward,
And retreated, baffled, beaten,
To the kingdom of Wabasso,
To the land of the White Rabbit,
Hearing still the gusty laughter,
Hearing Shingebis, the diver,
Singing, “O Kabibonokka,
You are but my fellow-mortal!”

Shawondasee, fat and lazy,
Had his dwelling far to southward,
In the drowsy, dreamy sunshine,
In the never-ending Summer.
He it was who sent the wood-birds,
Sent the robin, the Opechee,
Sent the bluebird, the Owaissa,
Sent the Shawshaw, sent the swallow,
Sent the wild-goose, Wawa, northward,
Sent the melons and tobacco,
And the grapes in purple clusters.

From his pipe the smoke ascending
Filled the sky with haze and vapor,
Filled the air with dreamy softness,
Gave a twinkle to the water,
Touched the rugged hills with smoothness,
Brought the tender Indian Summer
To the melancholy north-land,
In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes.

Listless, careless Shawondasee!
In his life he had one shadow,
In his heart one sorrow had he.
Once, as he was gazing northward,
Far away upon a prairie
He beheld a maiden standing,
Saw a tall and slender maiden
All alone upon a prairie;
Brightest green were all her garments,
And her hair was like the sunshine.

Day by day he gazed upon her,
Day by day he sighed with passion,
Day by day his heart within him
Grew more hot with love and longing
For the maid with yellow tresses.
But he was too fat and lazy
To bestir himself and woo her.
Yes, too indolent and easy
To pursue her and persuade her;
So he only gazed upon her,
Only sat and sighed with passion
For the maiden of the prairie.

Till one morning, looking northward,
He beheld her yellow tresses
Changed and covered o’er with whiteness,
Covered as with whitest snow-flakes.
“Ah! my brother from the North-land,
From the kingdom of Wabasso,
From the land of the White Rabbit!
You have stolen the maiden from me,
You have laid your hand upon her,
You have wooed and won my maiden,
With your stories of the North-land!”

Thus the wretched Shawondasee
Breathed into the air his sorrow;
And the South-Wind o’er the prairie
Wandered warm with sighs of passion,
With the sighs of Shawondasee,
Till the air seemed full of snow-flakes,
Full of thistle-down the prairie,
And the maid with hair like sunshine
Vanished from his sight forever;
Never more did Shawondasee
See the maid with yellow tresses!

Poor, deluded Shawondasee!
’T was no woman that you gazed at,
’T was no maiden that you sighed for,
’T was the prairie dandelion
That through all the dreamy Summer
You had gazed at with such longing,
You had sighed for with such passion,
And had puffed away forever,
Blown into the air with sighing.
Ah! deluded Shawondasee!

Thus the Four Winds were divided
Thus the sons of Mudjekeewis
Had their stations in the heavens,
At the corners of the heavens;
For himself the West-Wind only
Kept the mighty Mudjekeewis.

III
Hiawatha’s Childhood

Downward through the evening twilight,
In the days that are forgotten,
In the unremembered ages,
From the full moon fell Nokomis,
Fell the beautiful Nokomis,
She a wife, but not a mother.

She was sporting with her women,
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines,
When her rival the rejected,
Full of jealousy and hatred,
Cut the leafy swing asunder,
Cut in twain the twisted grape-vines,
And Nokomis fell affrighted
Downward through the evening twilight,
On the Muskoday, the meadow,
On the prairie full of blossoms.
“See! a star falls!” said the people;
“From the sky a star is falling!”

There among the ferns and mosses,
There among the prairie lilies,
On the Muskoday, the meadow,
In the moonlight and the starlight,
Fair Nokomis bore a daughter.
And she called her name Wenonah,
As the first-born of her daughters.
And the daughter of Nokomis
Grew up like the prairie lilies,
Grew a tall and slender maiden,
With the beauty of the moonlight,
With the beauty of the starlight.

And Nokomis warned her often,
Saying oft, and oft repeating,
“Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis,
Of the West-Wind, Mudjekeewis;
Listen not to what he tells you;
Lie not down upon the meadow,
Stoop not down among the lilies,
Lest the West-Wind come and harm you!”

But she heeded not the warning,
Heeded not those words of wisdom,
And the West-Wind came at evening,
Walking lightly o’er the prairie,
Whispering to the leaves and blossoms,
Bending low the flowers and grasses,
Found the beautiful Wenonah,
Lying there among the lilies,
Wooed her with his words of sweetness,
Wooed her with his soft caresses,
Till she bore a son in sorrow,
Bore a son of love and sorrow.

Thus was born my Hiawatha,
Thus was born the child of wonder;
But the daughter of Nokomis,
Hiawatha’s gentle mother,
In her anguish died deserted
By the West-Wind, false and faithless,
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.

For her daughter long and loudly
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis;
“Oh that I were dead!” she murmured,
“Oh that I were dead, as thou art!
No more work, and no more weeping,
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!”

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

There the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rocked him in his linden cradle,
Bedded soft in moss and rushes,
Safely bound with reindeer sinews;
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
“Hush! the Naked Bear will hear thee!”
Lulled him into slumber, singing,
“Ewa-yea! my little owlet!
Who is this, that lights the wigwam?
With his great eyes lights the wigwam?
Ewa-yea! my little owlet!”

Many things Nokomis taught him
Of the stars that shine in heaven;
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
Flaring far away to northward
In the frosty nights of Winter;
Showed the broad white road in heaven,
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
Running straight across the heavens,
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.

At the door on summer evenings
Sat the little Hiawatha;
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
Heard the lapping of the waters,
Sounds of music, words of wonder;
“Minne-wawa!” said the Pine-trees,
“Mudway-aushka!” said the water.

Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee,
Flitting through the dusk of evening,
With the twinkle of its candle
Lighting up the brakes and bushes,
And he sang the song of children,
Sang the song Nokomis taught him:
“Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly,
Little, flitting, white-fire insect,
Little, dancing, white-fire creature,
Light me with your little candle,
Ere upon my bed I lay me,
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids!”

Saw the moon rise from the water
Rippling, rounding from the water,
Saw the flecks and shadows on it,
Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?”
And the good Nokomis answered:
“Once a warrior, very angry,
Seized his grandmother, and threw her
Up into the sky at midnight;
Right against the moon he threw her;
’T is her body that you see there.”

Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
Whispered, “What is that, Nokomis?”
And the good Nokomis answered:
“’T is the heaven of flowers you see there;
All the wild-flowers of the forest,
All the lilies of the prairie,
When on earth they fade and perish,
Blossom in that heaven above us.”

When he heard the owls at midnight,
Hooting, laughing in the forest,
“What is that?” he cried in terror,
“What is that,” he said, “Nokomis?”
And the good Nokomis answered:
“That is but the owl and owlet,
Talking in their native language,
Talking, scolding at each other.”

Then the little Hiawatha
Learned of every bird its language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How they built their nests in Summer,
Where they hid themselves in Winter,
Talked with them whene’er he met them,
Called them “Hiawatha’s Chickens.”

Of all beasts he learned the language,
Learned their names and all their secrets,
How the beavers built their lodges,
Where the squirrels hid their acorns,
How the reindeer ran so swiftly,
Why the rabbit was so timid,
Talked with them whene’er he met them,
Called them “Hiawatha’s Brothers.”

Then Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
He the traveller and the talker,
He the friend of old Nokomis,
Made a bow for Hiawatha;
From a branch of ash he made it,
From an oak-bough made the arrows,
Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers,
And the cord he made of deer-skin.

Then he said to Hiawatha:
“Go, my son, into the forest,
Where the red deer herd together,
Kill for us a famous roebuck,
Kill for us a deer with antlers!”

Forth into the forest straightway
All alone walked Hiawatha
Proudly, with his bow and arrows;
And the birds sang round him, o’er him,
“Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!”
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
“Do not shoot us, Hiawatha!”

Up the oak-tree, close beside him,
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
In and out among the branches,
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree,
Laughed, and said between his laughing,
“Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!”

And the rabbit from his pathway
Leaped aside, and at a distance
Sat erect upon his haunches,
Half in fear and half in frolic,
Saying to the little hunter,
“Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!”

But he heeded not, nor heard them,
For his thoughts were with the red deer;
On their tracks his eyes were fastened,
Leading downward to the river,
To the ford across the river,
And as one in slumber walked he.

Hidden in the alder-bushes,
There he waited till the deer came,
Till he saw two antlers lifted,
Saw two eyes look from the thicket,
Saw two nostrils point to windward,
And a deer came down the pathway,
Flecked with leafy light and shadow.
And his heart within him fluttered,
Trembled like the leaves above him,
Like the birch-leaf palpitated,
As the deer came down the pathway.

Then, upon one knee uprising,
Hiawatha aimed an arrow;
Scarce a twig moved with his motion,
Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled,
But the wary roebuck started,
Stamped with all his hoofs together,
Listened with one foot uplifted,
Leaped as if to meet the arrow;
Ah! the singing, fatal arrow,
Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him!

Dead he lay there in the forest,
By the ford across the river;
Beat his timid heart no longer,
But the heart of Hiawatha
Throbbed and shouted and exulted,
As he bore the red deer homeward,
And Iagoo and Nokomis
Hailed his coming with applauses.

From the red deer’s hide Nokomis
Made a cloak for Hiawatha,
From the red deer’s flesh Nokomis
Made a banquet to his honor.
All the village came and feasted,
All the guests praised Hiawatha,
Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha!
Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee!

IV
Hiawatha and Mudjekeewis

Out of childhood into manhood
Now had grown my Hiawatha,
Skilled in all the craft of hunters,
Learned in all the lore of old men,
In all youthful sports and pastimes,
In all manly arts and labors.

Swift of foot was Hiawatha;
He could shoot an arrow from him,
And run forward with such fleetness,
That the arrow fell behind him!
Strong of arm was Hiawatha;
He could shoot ten arrows upward,
Shoot them with such strength and swiftness,
That the tenth had left the bow-string
Ere the first to earth had fallen!

He had mittens, Minjekahwun,
Magic mittens made of deer-skin;
When upon his hands he wore them,
He could smite the rocks asunder,
He could grind them into powder.
He had moccasins enchanted,
Magic moccasins of deer-skin;
When he bound them round his ankles,
When upon his feet he tied them,
At each stride a mile he measured!

Much he questioned old Nokomis
Of his father Mudjekeewis;
Learned from her the fatal secret
Of the beauty of his mother,
Of the falsehood of his father;
And his heart was hot within him,
Like a living coal his heart was.

Then he said to old Nokomis,
“I will go to Mudjekeewis,
See how fares it with my father,
At the doorways of the West-Wind,
At the portals of the Sunset!”

From his lodge went Hiawatha,
Dressed for travel, armed for hunting;
Dressed in deer-skin shirt and leggings,
Richly wrought with quills and wampum;
On his head his eagle-feathers,
Round his waist his belt of wampum,
In his hand his bow of ash-wood,
Strung with sinews of the reindeer;
In his quiver oaken arrows,
Tipped with jasper, winged with feathers;
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
With his moccasins enchanted.

Warning said the old Nokomis,
“Go not forth, O Hiawatha!
To the kingdom of the West-Wind,
To the realms of Mudjekeewis,
Lest he harm you with his magic,
Lest he kill you with his cunning!”

But the fearless Hiawatha
Heeded not her woman’s warning;
Forth he strode into the forest,
At each stride a mile he measured;
Lurid seemed the sky above him,
Lurid seemed the earth beneath him,
Hot and close the air around him,
Filled with smoke and fiery vapors,
As of burning woods and prairies,
For his heart was hot within him,
Like a living coal his heart was.

So he journeyed westward, westward,
Left the fleetest deer behind him,
Left the antelope and bison;
Crossed the rushing Esconaba,
Crossed the mighty Mississippi,
Passed the Mountains of the Prairie,
Passed the land of Crows and Foxes,
Passed the dwellings of the Blackfeet,
Came unto the Rocky Mountains,
To the kingdom of the West-Wind,
Where upon the gusty summits
Sat the ancient Mudjekeewis,
Ruler of the winds of heaven.

Filled with awe was Hiawatha
At the aspect of his father.
On the air about him wildly
Tossed and streamed his cloudy tresses,
Gleamed like drifting snow his tresses,
Glared like Ishkoodah, the comet,
Like the star with fiery tresses.

Filled with joy was Mudjekeewis
When he looked on Hiawatha,
Saw his youth rise up before him
In the face of Hiawatha,
Saw the beauty of Wenonah
From the grave rise up before him.

“Welcome!” said he, “Hiawatha,
To the kingdom of the West-Wind
Long have I been waiting for you
Youth is lovely, age is lonely,
Youth is fiery, age is frosty;
You bring back the days departed,
You bring back my youth of passion,
And the beautiful Wenonah!”

Many days they talked together,
Questioned, listened, waited, answered;
Much the mighty Mudjekeewis
Boasted of his ancient prowess,
Of his perilous adventures,
His indomitable courage,
His invulnerable body.

Patiently sat Hiawatha,
Listening to his father’s boasting;
With a smile he sat and listened,
Uttered neither threat nor menace,
Neither word nor look betrayed him,
But his heart was hot within him,
Like a living coal his heart was.

Then he said, “O Mudjekeewis,
Is there nothing that can harm you?
Nothing that you are afraid of?”
And the mighty Mudjekeewis,
Grand and gracious in his boasting,
Answered, saying, “There is nothing,
Nothing but the black rock yonder,
Nothing but the fatal Wawbeek!”

And he looked at Hiawatha
With a wise look and benignant,
With a countenance paternal,
Looked with pride upon the beauty
Of his tall and graceful figure,
Saying, “O my Hiawatha!
Is there anything can harm you?
Anything you are afraid of?”

But the wary Hiawatha
Paused awhile, as if uncertain,
Held his peace, as if resolving,
And then answered, “There is nothing,
Nothing but the bulrush yonder,
Nothing but the great Apukwa!”

And as Mudjekeewis, rising,
Stretched his hand to pluck the bulrush,
Hiawatha cried in terror,
Cried in well-dissembled terror,
“Kago! kago! do not touch it!”
“Ah, kaween!” said Mudjekeewis,
“No indeed, I will not touch it!”

Then they talked of other matters;
First of Hiawatha’s brothers,
First of Wabun, of the East-Wind,
Of the South-Wind, Shawondasee,
Of the North, Kabibonokka;
Then of Hiawatha’s mother,
Of the beautiful Wenonah,
Of her birth upon the meadow,
Of her death, as old Nokomis
Had remembered and related.

And he cried, “O Mudjekeewis,
It was you who killed Wenonah,
Took her young life and her beauty,
Broke the Lily of the Prairie,
Trampled it beneath your footsteps;
You confess it! you confess it!”
And the mighty Mudjekeewis
Tossed upon the wind his tresses,
Bowed his hoary head in anguish,
With a silent nod assented.

Then up started Hiawatha,
And with threatening look and gesture
Laid his hand upon the black rock,
On the fatal Wawbeek laid it,
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Rent the jutting crag asunder,
Smote and crushed it into fragments,
Hurled them madly at his father,
The remorseful Mudjekeewis,
For his heart was hot within him,
Like a living coal his heart was.

But the ruler of the West-Wind
Blew the fragments backward from him,
With the breathing of his nostrils,
With the tempest of his anger,
Blew them back at his assailant;
Seized the bulrush, the Apukwa,
Dragged it with its roots and fibres
From the margin of the meadow,
From its ooze the giant bulrush;
Long and loud laughed Hiawatha!

Then began the deadly conflict,
Hand to hand among the mountains;
From his eyry screamed the eagle,
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
Sat upon the crags around them,
Wheeling flapped his wings above them.

Like a tall tree in the tempest
Bent and lashed the giant bulrush;
And in masses huge and heavy
Crashing fell the fatal Wawbeek;
Till the earth shook with the tumult
And confusion of the battle,
And the air was full of shoutings,
And the thunder of the mountains,
Starting, answered, “Baim-wawa!”

Back retreated Mudjekeewis,
Rushing westward o’er the mountains,
Stumbling westward down the mountains,
Three whole days retreated fighting,
Still pursued by Hiawatha
To the doorways of the West-Wind,
To the portals of the Sunset,
To the earth’s remotest border,
Where into the empty spaces
Sinks the sun, as a flamingo
Drops into her nest at nightfall
In the melancholy marshes.

“Hold!” at length cried Mudjekeewis,
“Hold, my son, my Hiawatha!
’T is impossible to kill me,
For you cannot kill the immortal
I have put you to this trial,
But to know and prove your courage;
Now receive the prize of valor!

“Go back to your home and people,
Live among them, toil among them,
Cleanse the earth from all that harms it,
Clear the fishing-grounds and rivers,
Slay all monsters and magicians,
All the Wendigoes, the giants,
All the serpents, the Kenabeeks,
As I slew the Mishe-Mokwa,
Slew the Great Bear of the mountains.

“And at last when Death draws near you,
When the awful eyes of Pauguk
Glare upon you in the darkness,
I will share my kingdom with you,
Ruler shall you be thenceforward
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
Of the home-wind, the Keewaydin.”

Thus was fought that famous battle
In the dreadful days of Shah-shah,
In the days long since departed,
In the kingdom of the West-Wind.
Still the hunter sees its traces
Scattered far o’er hill and valley;
Sees the giant bulrush growing
By the ponds and water-courses,
Sees the masses of the Wawbeek
Lying still in every valley.

Homeward now went Hiawatha;
Pleasant was the landscape round him,
Pleasant was the air above him,
For the bitterness of anger
Had departed wholly from him,
From his brain the thought of vengeance,
From his heart the burning fever.

Only once his pace he slackened,
Only once he paused or halted,
Paused to purchase heads of arrows
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Where the Falls of Minnehaha
Flash and gleam among the oak-trees,
Laugh and leap into the valley.

There the ancient Arrow-maker
Made his arrow-heads of sandstone,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
Smoothed and sharpened at the edges,
Hard and polished, keen and costly.

With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter,
Wayward as the Minnehaha,
With her moods of shade and sunshine,
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate,
Feet as rapid as the river,
Tresses flowing like the water,
And as musical a laughter:
And he named her from the river,
From the water-fall he named her,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water.

Was it then for heads of arrows,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony,
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper,
That my Hiawatha halted
In the land of the Dacotahs?

Was it not to see the maiden,
See the face of Laughing Water
Peeping from behind the curtain,
Hear the rustling of her garments
From behind the waving curtain,
As one sees the Minnehaha
Gleaming, glancing through the branches,
As one hears the Laughing Water
From behind its screen of branches?

Who shall say what thoughts and visions
Fill the fiery brains of young men?
Who shall say what dreams of beauty
Filled the heart of Hiawatha?
All he told to old Nokomis,
When he reached the lodge at sunset,
Was the meeting with his father,
Was his fight with Mudjekeewis;
Not a word he said of arrows,
Not a word of Laughing Water.

V
Hiawatha’s Fasting

You shall hear how Hiawatha
Prayed and fasted in the forest,
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
Not for triumphs in the battle,
And renown among the warriors,
But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.

First he built a lodge for fasting,
Built a wigwam in the forest,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
In the blithe and pleasant Spring-time,
In the Moon of Leaves he built it,
And, with dreams and visions many,
Seven whole days and nights he fasted.

On the first day of his fasting
Through the leafy woods he wandered;
Saw the deer start from the thicket,
Saw the rabbit in his burrow,
Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming,
Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Rattling in his hoard of acorns,
Saw the pigeon, the Omeme,
Building nests among the pinetrees,
And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa,
Flying to the fen-lands northward,
Whirring, wailing far above him.
“Master of Life!” he cried, desponding,
“Must our lives depend on these things?”

On the next day of his fasting
By the river’s brink he wandered,
Through the Muskoday, the meadow,
Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee,
Saw the blueberry, Meenahga,
And the strawberry, Odahmin,
And the gooseberry, Shahbomin,
And the grape-vine, the Bemahgut,
Trailing o’er the alder-branches,
Filling all the air with fragrance!
“Master of Life!” he cried, desponding,
“Must our lives depend on these things?”

On the third day of his fasting
By the lake he sat and pondered,
By the still, transparent water;
Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping,
Scattering drops like beads of wampum,
Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa,
Like a sunbeam in the water,
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha,
And the herring, Okahahwis,
And the Shawgashee, the crawfish!
“Master of Life!” he cried, desponding,
“Must our lives depend on these things?”

On the fourth day of his fasting
In his lodge he lay exhausted;
From his couch of leaves and branches
Gazing with half-open eyelids,
Full of shadowy dreams and visions,
On the dizzy, swimming landscape,
On the gleaming of the water,
On the splendor of the sunset.

And he saw a youth approaching,
Dressed in garments green and yellow,
Coming through the purple twilight,
Through the splendor of the sunset;
Plumes of green bent o’er his forehead,
And his hair was soft and golden.

Standing at the open doorway,
Long he looked at Hiawatha,
Looked with pity and compassion
On his wasted form and features,
And, in accents like the sighing
Of the South-Wind in the tree-tops,
Said he, “O my Hiawatha!
All your prayers are heard in heaven,
For you pray not like the others;
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
Not for triumph in the battle,
Nor renown among the warriors,
But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.

“From the Master of Life descending,
I, the friend of man, Mondamin,
Come to warn you and instruct you,
How by struggle and by labor
You shall gain what you have prayed for.
Rise up from your bed of branches,
Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!”

Faint with famine, Hiawatha
Started from his bed of branches,
From the twilight of his wigwam
Forth into the flush of sunset
Came, and wrestled with Mondamin;
At his touch he felt new courage
Throbbing in his brain and bosom,
Felt new life and hope and vigor
Run through every nerve and fibre.

So they wrestled there together
In the glory of the sunset,
And the more they strove and struggled,
Stronger still grew Hiawatha;
Till the darkness fell around them,
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
From her nest among the pine-trees,
Gave a cry of lamentation,
Gave a scream of pain and famine.

“’T is enough!” then said Mondamin,
Smiling upon Hiawatha,
“But tomorrow, when the sun sets,
I will come again to try you.”
And he vanished, and was seen not;
Whether sinking as the rain sinks,
Whether rising as the mists rise,
Hiawatha saw not, knew not,
Only saw that he had vanished,
Leaving him alone and fainting,
With the misty lake below him,
And the reeling stars above him.

On the morrow and the next day,
When the sun through heaven descending,
Like a red and burning cinder
From the hearth of the Great Spirit,
Fell into the western waters,
Came Mondamin for the trial,
For the strife with Hiawatha;
Came as silent as the dew comes,
From the empty air appearing,
Into empty air returning,
Taking shape when earth it touches,
But invisible to all men
In its coming and its going.

Thrice they wrestled there together
In the glory of the sunset,
Till the darkness fell around them,
Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
From her nest among the pine-trees,
Uttered her loud cry of famine,
And Mondamin paused to listen.

Tall and beautiful he stood there,
In his garments green and yellow;
To and fro his plumes above him,
Waved and nodded with his breathing,
And the sweat of the encounter
Stood like drops of dew upon him.

And he cried, “O Hiawatha!
Bravely have you wrestled with me,
Thrice have wrestled stoutly with me,
And the Master of Life, who sees us,
He will give to you the triumph!”

Then he smiled, and said: “To-morrow
Is the last day of your conflict,
Is the last day of your fasting.
You will conquer and o’ercome me;
Make a bed for me to lie in,
Where the rain may fall upon me,
Where the sun may come and warm me;
Strip these garments, green and yellow,
Strip this nodding plumage from me,
Lay me in the earth, and make it
Soft and loose and light above me.

“Let no hand disturb my slumber,
Let no weed nor worm molest me,
Let not Kahgahgee, the raven,
Come to haunt me and molest me,
Only come yourself to watch me,
Till I wake, and start, and quicken,
Till I leap into the sunshine”

And thus saying, he departed;
Peacefully slept Hiawatha,
But he heard the Wawonaissa,
Heard the whippoorwill complaining,
Perched upon his lonely wigwam;
Heard the rushing Sebowisha,
Heard the rivulet rippling near him,
Talking to the darksome forest;
Heard the sighing of the branches,
As they lifted and subsided
At the passing of the night-wind,
Heard them, as one hears in slumber
Far-off murmurs, dreamy whispers:
Peacefully slept Hiawatha.

On the morrow came Nokomis,
On the seventh day of his fasting,
Came with food for Hiawatha,
Came imploring and bewailing,
Lest his hunger should o’ercome him,
Lest his fasting should be fatal.

But he tasted not, and touched not,
Only said to her, “Nokomis,
Wait until the sun is setting,
Till the darkness falls around us,
Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Crying from the desolate marshes,
Tells us that the day is ended.”

Homeward weeping went Nokomis,
Sorrowing for her Hiawatha,
Fearing lest his strength should fail him,
Lest his fasting should be fatal.
He meanwhile sat weary waiting
For the coming of Mondamin,
Till the shadows, pointing eastward,
Lengthened over field and forest,
Till the sun dropped from the heaven,
Floating on the waters westward,
As a red leaf in the Autumn
Falls and floats upon the water,
Falls and sinks into its bosom.

And behold! the young Mondamin,
With his soft and shining tresses,
With his garments green and yellow,
With his long and glossy plumage,
Stood and beckoned at the doorway.
And as one in slumber walking,
Pale and haggard, but undaunted,
From the wigwam Hiawatha
Came and wrestled with Mondamin.

Round about him spun the landscape,
Sky and forest reeled together,
And his strong heart leaped within him,
As the sturgeon leaps and struggles
In a net to break its meshes.
Like a ring of fire around him
Blazed and flared the red horizon,
And a hundred suns seemed looking
At the combat of the wrestlers.

Suddenly upon the greensward
All alone stood Hiawatha,
Panting with his wild exertion,
Palpitating with the struggle;
And before him breathless, lifeless,
Lay the youth, with hair dishevelled,
Plumage torn, and garments tattered,
Dead he lay there in the sunset.

And victorious Hiawatha
Made the grave as he commanded,
Stripped the garments from Mondamin,
Stripped his tattered plumage from him,
Laid him in the earth, and made it
Soft and loose and light above him;
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
From the melancholy moorlands,
Gave a cry of lamentation,
Gave a cry of pain and anguish!

Homeward then went Hiawatha
To the lodge of old Nokomis,
And the seven days of his fasting
Were accomplished and completed.
But the place was not forgotten
Where he wrestled with Mondamin;
Nor forgotten nor neglected
Was the grave where lay Mondamin,
Sleeping in the rain and sunshine,
Where his scattered plumes and garments
Faded in the rain and sunshine.

Day by day did Hiawatha
Go to wait and watch beside it;
Kept the dark mould soft above it,
Kept it clean from weeds and insects,
Drove away, with scoffs and shoutings,
Kahgahgee, the king of ravens.

Till at length a small green feather
From the earth shot slowly upward,
Then another and another,
And before the Summer ended
Stood the maize in all its beauty,
With its shining robes about it,
And its long, soft, yellow tresses;
And in rapture Hiawatha
Cried aloud, “It is Mondamin!
Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin!”

Then he called to old Nokomis
And Iagoo, the great boaster,
Showed them where the maize was growing,
Told them of his wondrous vision,
Of his wrestling and his triumph,
Of this new gift to the nations,
Which should be their food forever.

And still later, when the Autumn
Changed the long, green leaves to yellow,
And the soft and juicy kernels
Grew like wampum hard and yellow,
Then the ripened ears he gathered,
Stripped the withered husks from off them,
As he once had stripped the wrestler,
Gave the first Feast of Mondamin,
And made known unto the people
This new gift of the Great Spirit.

VI
Hiawatha’s Friends

Two good friends had Hiawatha,
Singled out from all the others,
Bound to him in closest union,
And to whom he gave the right hand
Of his heart, in joy and sorrow;
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.

Straight between them ran the pathway,
Never grew the grass upon it;
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods,
Story-tellers, mischief-makers,
Found no eager ear to listen,
Could not breed ill-will between them,
For they kept each other’s counsel,
Spake with naked hearts together,
Pondering much and much contriving
How the tribes of men might prosper.

Most beloved by Hiawatha
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers.
Beautiful and childlike was he,
Brave as man is, soft as woman,
Pliant as a wand of willow,
Stately as a deer with antlers.

When he sang, the village listened;
All the warriors gathered round him,
All the women came to hear him;
Now he stirred their souls to passion,
Now he melted them to pity.

From the hollow reeds he fashioned
Flutes so musical and mellow,
That the brook, the Sebowisha,
Ceased to murmur in the woodland,
That the wood-birds ceased from singing,
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Ceased his chatter in the oak-tree,
And the rabbit, the Wabasso,
Sat upright to look and listen.

Yes, the brook, the Sebowisha,
Pausing, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach my waves to flow in music,
Softly as your words in singing!”

Yes, the bluebird, the Owaissa,
Envious, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach me tones as wild and wayward,
Teach me songs as full of frenzy!”

Yes, the robin, the Opechee,
Joyous, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach me tones as sweet and tender,
Teach me songs as full of gladness!”

And the whippoorwill, Wawonaissa,
Sobbing, said, “O Chibiabos,
Teach me tones as melancholy,
Teach me songs as full of sadness!”

All the many sounds of nature
Borrowed sweetness from his singing;
All the hearts of men were softened
By the pathos of his music;
For he sang of peace and freedom,
Sang of beauty, love, and longing;
Sang of death, and life undying
In the Islands of the Blessed,
In the kingdom of Ponemah,
In the land of the Hereafter.

Very dear to Hiawatha
Was the gentle Chibiabos,
He the best of all musicians,
He the sweetest of all singers;
For his gentleness he loved him,
And the magic of his singing.

Dear, too, unto Hiawatha
Was the very strong man, Kwasind,
He the strongest of all mortals,
He the mightiest among many;
For his very strength he loved him,
For his strength allied to goodness.

Idle in his youth was Kwasind,
Very listless, dull, and dreamy,
Never played with other children,
Never fished and never hunted,
Not like other children was he;
But they saw that much he fasted,
Much his Manito entreated,
Much besought his Guardian Spirit.

“Lazy Kwasind!” said his mother,
“In my work you never help me!
In the Summer you are roaming
Idly in the fields and forests;
In the Winter you are cowering
O’er the firebrands in the wigwam!
In the coldest days of Winter
I must break the ice for fishing;
With my nets you never help me!
At the door my nets are hanging,
Dripping, freezing with the water;
Go and wring them, Yenadizze!
Go and dry them in the sunshine!”

Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind
Rose, but made no angry answer;
From the lodge went forth in silence,
Took the nets, that hung together,
Dripping, freezing at the doorway;
Like a wisp of straw he wrung them,
Like a wisp of straw he broke them,
Could not wring them without breaking,
Such the strength was in his fingers.

“Lazy Kwasind!” said his father,
“In the hunt you never help me;
Every bow you touch is broken,
Snapped asunder every arrow;
Yet come with me to the forest,
You shall bring the hunting homeward.”

Down a narrow pass they wandered,
Where a brooklet led them onward,
Where the trail of deer and bison
Marked the soft mud on the margin,
Till they found all further passage
Shut against them, barred securely
By the trunks of trees uprooted,
Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise,
And forbidding further passage.

“We must go back,” said the old man,
“O’er these logs we cannot clamber;
Not a woodchuck could get through them,
Not a squirrel clamber o’er them!”
And straightway his pipe he lighted,
And sat down to smoke and ponder.
But before his pipe was finished,
Lo! the path was cleared before him;
All the trunks had Kwasind lifted,
To the right hand, to the left hand,
Shot the pine-trees swift as arrows,
Hurled the cedars light as lances.

“Lazy Kwasind!” said the young men,
As they sported in the meadow:
“Why stand idly looking at us,
Leaning on the rock behind you?
Come and wrestle with the others,
Let us pitch the quoit together!”

Lazy Kwasind made no answer,
To their challenge made no answer,
Only rose, and slowly turning,
Seized the huge rock in his fingers,
Tore it from its deep foundation,
Poised it in the air a moment,
Pitched it sheer into the river,
Sheer into the swift Pauwating,
Where it still is seen in Summer.

Once as down that foaming river,
Down the rapids of Pauwating,
Kwasind sailed with his companions,
In the stream he saw a beaver,
Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers,
Struggling with the rushing currents,
Rising, sinking in the water.

Without speaking, without pausing,
Kwasind leaped into the river,
Plunged beneath the bubbling surface,
Through the whirlpools chased the beaver,
Followed him among the islands,
Stayed so long beneath the water,
That his terrified companions
Cried, “Alas! good-by to Kwasind!
We shall never more see Kwasind!”
But he reappeared triumphant,
And upon his shining shoulders
Brought the beaver, dead and dripping,
Brought the King of all the Beavers.

And these two, as I have told you,
Were the friends of Hiawatha,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
Long they lived in peace together,
Spake with naked hearts together,
Pondering much and much contriving
How the tribes of men might prosper.

VII
Hiawatha’s Sailing

“Give me of your bark, O Birch-tree!
Of your yellow bark, O Birch-tree!
Growing by the rushing river,
Tall and stately in the valley!
I a light canoe will build me,
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing,
That shall float upon the river,
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily!

“Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-tree!
Lay aside your white-skin wrapper,
For the Summer-time is coming,
And the sun is warm in heaven,
And you need no white-skin wrapper!”

Thus aloud cried Hiawatha
In the solitary forest,
By the rushing Taquamenaw,
When the birds were singing gayly,
In the Moon of Leaves were singing,
And the sun, from sleep awaking,
Started up and said, “Behold me!
Gheezis, the great Sun, behold me!”

And the tree with all its branches
Rustled in the breeze of morning,
Saying, with a sigh of patience,
“Take my cloak, O Hiawatha!”

With his knife the tree he girdled;
Just beneath its lowest branches,
Just above the roots, he cut it,
Till the sap came oozing outward;
Down the trunk, from top to bottom,
Sheer he cleft the bark asunder,
With a wooden wedge he raised it,
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken.

“Give me of your boughs, O Cedar!
Of your strong and pliant branches,
My canoe to make more steady,
Make more strong and firm beneath me!”

Through the summit of the Cedar
Went a sound, a cry of horror,
Went a murmur of resistance;
But it whispered, bending downward,
“Take my boughs, O Hiawatha!”

Down he hewed the boughs of cedar,
Shaped them straightway to a frame-work,
Like two bows he formed and shaped them,
Like two bended bows together.

“Give me of your roots, O Tamarack!
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-tree!
My canoe to bind together,
So to bind the ends together
That the water may not enter,
That the river may not wet me!”

And the Larch, with all its fibres,
Shivered in the air of morning,
Touched his forehead with its tassels,
Slid, with one long sigh of sorrow.
“Take them all, O Hiawatha!”

From the earth he tore the fibres,
Tore the tough roots of the Larch-tree,
Closely sewed the bark together,
Bound it closely to the frame-work.

“Give me of your balm, O Fir-tree!
Of your balsam and your resin,
So to close the seams together
That the water may not enter,
That the river may not wet me!”

And the Fir-tree, tall and sombre,
Sobbed through all its robes of darkness,
Rattled like a shore with pebbles,
Answered wailing, answered weeping,
“Take my balm, O Hiawatha!”

And he took the tears of balsam,
Took the resin of the Fir-tree,
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure,
Made each crevice safe from water.

“Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog!
All your quills, O Kagh, the Hedgehog!
I will make a necklace of them,
Make a girdle for my beauty,
And two stars to deck her bosom!”

From a hollow tree the Hedgehog
With his sleepy eyes looked at him,
Shot his shining quills, like arrows,
Saying with a drowsy murmur,
Through the tangle of his whiskers,
“Take my quills, O Hiawatha!”

From the ground the quills he gathered,
All the little shining arrows,
Stained them red and blue and yellow,
With the juice of roots and berries;
Into his canoe he wrought them,
Round its waist a shining girdle,
Round its bows a gleaming necklace,
On its breast two stars resplendent.

Thus the Birch Canoe was builded
In the valley, by the river,
In the bosom of the forest;
And the forest’s life was in it,
All its mystery and its magic,
All the lightness of the birch-tree,
All the toughness of the cedar,
All the larch’s supple sinews;
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily.

Paddles none had Hiawatha,
Paddles none he had or needed,
For his thoughts as paddles served him,
And his wishes served to guide him;
Swift or slow at will he glided,
Veered to right or left at pleasure.

Then he called aloud to Kwasind,
To his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,
Saying, “Help me clear this river
Of its sunken logs and sand-bars.”

Straight into the river Kwasind
Plunged as if he were an otter,
Dived as if he were a beaver,
Stood up to his waist in water,
To his arm-pits in the river,
Swam and scouted in the river,
Tugged at sunken logs and branches,
With his hands he scooped the sand-bars,
With his feet the ooze and tangle.

And thus sailed my Hiawatha
Down the rushing Taquamenaw,
Sailed through all its bends and windings,
Sailed through all its deeps and shallows,
While his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,
Swam the deeps, the shallows waded.

Up and down the river went they,
In and out among its islands,
Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar,
Dragged the dead trees from its channel,
Made its passage safe and certain,
Made a pathway for the people,
From its springs among the mountains,
To the waters of Pauwating,
To the bay of Taquamenaw.

VIII
Hiawatha’s Fishing

Forth upon the Gitche Gumee,
On the shining Big-Sea-Water,
With his fishing-line of cedar,
Of the twisted bark of cedar,
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma,
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes,
In his birch canoe exulting
All alone went Hiawatha.

Through the clear, transparent water
He could see the fishes swimming
Far down in the depths below him;
See the yellow perch, the Sahwa,
Like a sunbeam in the water,
See the Shawgashee, the craw-fish,
Like a spider on the bottom,
On the white and sandy bottom.

At the stern sat Hiawatha,
With his fishing-line of cedar;
In his plumes the breeze of morning
Played as in the hemlock branches;
On the bows, with tail erected,
Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo;
In his fur the breeze of morning
Played as in the prairie grasses.

On the white sand of the bottom
Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma,
Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishes;
Through his gills he breathed the water,
With his fins he fanned and winnowed,
With his tail he swept the sand-floor.

There he lay in all his armor;
On each side a shield to guard him,
Plates of bone upon his forehead,
Down his sides and back and shoulders
Plates of bone with spines projecting
Painted was he with his war-paints,
Stripes of yellow, red, and azure,
Spots of brown and spots of sable;
And he lay there on the bottom,
Fanning with his fins of purple,
As above him Hiawatha
In his birch canoe came sailing,
With his fishing-line of cedar.

“Take my bait,” cried Hiawatha,
Dawn into the depths beneath him,
“Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahma!
Come up from below the water,
Let us see which is the stronger!”
And he dropped his line of cedar
Through the clear, transparent water,
Waited vainly for an answer,
Long sat waiting for an answer,
And repeating loud and louder,
“Take my bait, O King of Fishes!”

Quiet lay the sturgeon, Nahma,
Fanning slowly in the water,
Looking up at Hiawatha,
Listening to his call and clamor,
His unnecessary tumult,
Till he wearied of the shouting;
And he said to the Kenozha,
To the pike, the Maskenozha,
“Take the bait of this rude fellow,
Break the line of Hiawatha!”

In his fingers Hiawatha
Felt the loose line jerk and tighten,
As he drew it in, it tugged so
That the birch canoe stood endwise,
Like a birch log in the water,
With the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Perched and frisking on the summit.

Full of scorn was Hiawatha
When he saw the fish rise upward,
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha,
Coming nearer, nearer to him,
And he shouted through the water,
“Esa! esa! shame upon you!
You are but the pike, Kenozha,
You are not the fish I wanted,
You are not the King of Fishes!”

Reeling downward to the bottom
Sank the pike in great confusion,
And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma,
Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
To the bream, with scales of crimson,
“Take the bait of this great boaster,
Break the line of Hiawatha!”

Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming,
Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
Seized the line of Hiawatha,
Swung with all his weight upon it,
Made a whirlpool in the water,
Whirled the birch canoe in circles,
Round and round in gurgling eddies,
Till the circles in the water
Reached the far-off sandy beaches,
Till the water-flags and rushes
Nodded on the distant margins.

But when Hiawatha saw him
Slowly rising through the water,
Lifting up his disk refulgent,
Loud he shouted in derision,
“Esa! esa! shame upon you!
You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
You are not the fish I wanted,
You are not the King of Fishes!”

Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming,
Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish,
And again the sturgeon, Nahma,
Heard the shout of Hiawatha,
Heard his challenge of defiance,
The unnecessary tumult,
Ringing far across the water.

From the white sand of the bottom
Up he rose with angry gesture,
Quivering in each nerve and fibre,
Clashing all his plates of armor,
Gleaming bright with all his war-paint;
In his wrath he darted upward,
Flashing leaped into the sunshine,
Opened his great jaws, and swallowed
Both canoe and Hiawatha.

Down into that darksome cavern
Plunged the headlong Hiawatha,
As a log on some black river
Shoots and plunges down the rapids,
Found himself in utter darkness,
Groped about in helpless wonder,
Till he felt a great heart beating,
Throbbing in that utter darkness.

And he smote it in his anger,
With his fist, the heart of Nahma,
Felt the mighty King of Fishes
Shudder through each nerve and fibre,
Heard the water gurgle round him
As he leaped and staggered through it,
Sick at heart, and faint and weary.

Crosswise then did Hiawatha
Drag his birch-canoe for safety,
Lest from out the jaws of Nahma,
In the turmoil and confusion,
Forth he might be hurled and perish.
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Frisked and chatted very gayly,
Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha
Till the labor was completed.

Then said Hiawatha to him,
“O my little friend, the squirrel,
Bravely have you toiled to help me;
Take the thanks of Hiawatha,
And the name which now he gives you;
For hereafter and forever
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo,
Tail-in-air the boys shall call you!”

And again the sturgeon, Nahma,
Gasped and quivered in the water,
Then was still, and drifted landward
Till he grated on the pebbles,
Till the listening Hiawatha
Heard him grate upon the margin,
Felt him strand upon the pebbles,
Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes,
Lay there dead upon the margin.

Then he heard a clang and flapping,
As of many wings assembling,
Heard a screaming and confusion,
As of birds of prey contending,
Saw a gleam of light above him,
Shining through the ribs of Nahma,
Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls,
Of Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, peering,
Gazing at him through the opening,
Heard them saying to each other,
“’T is our brother, Hiawatha!”

And he shouted from below them,
Cried exulting from the caverns:
“O ye sea-gulls! O my brothers!
I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma;
Make the rifts a little larger,
With your claws the openings widen,
Set me free from this dark prison,
And henceforward and forever
Men shall speak of your achievements,
Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls,
Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers!”

And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls
Toiled with beak and claws together,
Made the rifts and openings wider
In the mighty ribs of Nahma,
And from peril and from prison,
From the body of the sturgeon,
From the peril of the water,
They released my Hiawatha.

He was standing near his wigwam,
On the margin of the water,
And he called to old Nokomis,
Called and beckoned to Nokomis,
Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma,
Lying lifeless on the pebbles,
With the sea-gulls feeding on him.

“I have slain the Mishe-Nahma,
Slain the King of Fishes!” said he;
“Look! the sea-gulls feed upon him,
Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls;
Drive them not away, Nokomis,
They have saved me from great peril
In the body of the sturgeon,
Wait until their meal is ended,
Till their craws are full with feasting,
Till they homeward fly, at sunset,
To their nests among the marshes;
Then bring all your pots and kettles,
And make oil for us in Winter.”

And she waited till the sun set,
Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun,
Rose above the tranquil water,
Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls,
From their banquet rose with clamor,
And across the fiery sunset
Winged their way to far-off islands,
To their nests among the rushes.

To his sleep went Hiawatha,
And Nokomis to her labor,
Toiling patient in the moonlight,
Till the sun and moon changed places,
Till the sky was red with sunrise,
And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls,
Came back from the reedy islands,
Clamorous for their morning banquet.

Three whole days and nights alternate
Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls
Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma,
Till the waves washed through the rib-bones,
Till the sea-gulls came no longer,
And upon the sands lay nothing
But the skeleton of Nahma.

IX
Hiawatha and the Pearl-Feather

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O’er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.

Fiercely the red sun descending
Burned his way along the heavens,
Set the sky on fire behind him,
As war-parties, when retreating,
Burn the prairies on their war-trail;
And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward,
Suddenly starting from his ambush,
Followed fast those bloody footprints,
Followed in that fiery war-trail,
With its glare upon his features.

And Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
Spake these words to Hiawatha:
“Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,
Megissogwon, the Magician,
Manito of Wealth and Wampum,
Guarded by his fiery serpents,
Guarded by the black pitch-water.
You can see his fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Coiling, playing in the water;
You can see the black pitch-water
Stretching far away beyond them,
To the purple clouds of sunset!

“He it was who slew my father,
By his wicked wiles and cunning,
When he from the moon descended,
When he came on earth to seek me.
He, the mightiest of Magicians,
Sends the fever from the marshes,
Sends the pestilential vapors,
Sends the poisonous exhalations,
Sends the white fog from the fen-lands,
Sends disease and death among us!

“Take your bow, O Hiawatha,
Take your arrows, jasper-headed,
Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,
And your mittens, Minjekahwun,
And your birch-canoe for sailing,
And the oil of Mishe-Nahma,
So to smear its sides, that swiftly
You may pass the black pitch-water;
Slay this merciless magician,
Save the people from the fever
That he breathes across the fen-lands,
And avenge my father’s murder!”

Straightway then my Hiawatha
Armed himself with all his war-gear,
Launched his birch-canoe for sailing;
With his palm its sides he patted,
Said with glee, “Cheemaun, my darling,
O my Birch-canoe! leap forward,
Where you see the fiery serpents,
Where you see the black pitch-water!”

Forward leaped Cheemaun exulting,
And the noble Hiawatha
Sang his war-song wild and woful,
And above him the war-eagle,
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
Master of all fowls with feathers,
Screamed and hurtled through the heavens.

Soon he reached the fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Lying huge upon the water,
Sparkling, rippling in the water,
Lying coiled across the passage,
With their blazing crests uplifted,
Breathing fiery fogs and vapors,
So that none could pass beyond them.

But the fearless Hiawatha
Cried aloud, and spake in this wise,
“Let me pass my way, Kenabeek,
Let me go upon my journey!”
And they answered, hissing fiercely,
With their fiery breath made answer:
“Back, go back! O Shaugodaya!
Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart!”

Then the angry Hiawatha
Raised his mighty bow of ash-tree,
Seized his arrows, jasper-headed,
Shot them fast among the serpents;
Every twanging of the bow-string
Was a war-cry and a death-cry,
Every whizzing of an arrow
Was a death-song of Kenabeek.

Weltering in the bloody water,
Dead lay all the fiery serpents,
And among them Hiawatha
Harmless sailed, and cried exulting:
“Onward, O Cheemaun, my darling!
Onward to the black pitch-water!”

Then he took the oil of Nahma,
And the bows and sides anointed,
Smeared them well with oil, that swiftly
He might pass the black pitch-water.

All night long he sailed upon it,
Sailed upon that sluggish water,
Covered with its mould of ages,
Black with rotting water-rushes,
Rank with flags and leaves of lilies,
Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal,
Lighted by the shimmering moonlight,
And by will-o’-the-wisps illumined,
Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled,
In their weary night-encampments.

All the air was white with moonlight,
All the water black with shadow,
And around him the Suggema,
The mosquito, sang his war-song,
And the fire-flies, Wah-wah-taysee,
Waved their torches to mislead him;
And the bull-frog, the Dahinda,
Thrust his head into the moonlight,
Fixed his yellow eyes upon him,
Sobbed and sank beneath the surface;
And anon a thousand whistles,
Answered over all the fen-lands,
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
Far off on the reedy margin,
Heralded the hero’s coming.

Westward thus fared Hiawatha,
Toward the realm of Megissogwon,
Toward the land of the Pearl-Feather,
Till the level moon stared at him
In his face stared pale and haggard,
Till the sun was hot behind him,
Till it burned upon his shoulders,
And before him on the upland
He could see the Shining Wigwam
Of the Manito of Wampum,
Of the mightiest of Magicians.

Then once more Cheemaun he patted,
To his birch-canoe said, “Onward!”
And it stirred in all its fibres,
And with one great bound of triumph
Leaped across the water-lilies,
Leaped through tangled flags and rushes,
And upon the beach beyond them
Dry-shod landed Hiawatha.

Straight he took his bow of ash-tree,
On the sand one end he rested,
With his knee he pressed the middle,
Stretched the faithful bow-string tighter,
Took an arrow, jasperheaded,
Shot it at the Shining Wigwam,
Sent it singing as a herald,
As a bearer of his message,
Of his challenge loud and lofty:
“Come forth from your lodge, Pearl-Feather!
Hiawatha waits your coming!”

Straightway from the Shining Wigwam
Came the mighty Megissogwon,
Tall of stature, broad of shoulder,
Dark and terrible in aspect,
Clad from head to foot in wampum,
Armed with all his warlike weapons,
Painted like the sky of morning,
Streaked with crimson, blue, and yellow,
Crested with great eagle-feathers,
Streaming upward, streaming outward.

“Well I know you, Hiawatha!”
Cried he in a voice of thunder,
In a tone of loud derision.
“Hasten back, O Shaugodaya!
Hasten back among the women,
Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart!
I will slay you as you stand there,
As of old I slew her father!”

But my Hiawatha answered,
Nothing daunted, fearing nothing:
“Big words do not smite like war-clubs,
Boastful breath is not a bow-string,
Taunts are not so sharp as arrows,
Deeds are better things than words are,
Actions mightier than boastings!”

Then began the greatest battle
That the sun had ever looked on,
That the war-birds ever witnessed.
All a Summer’s day it lasted,
From the sunrise to the sunset;
For the shafts of Hiawatha
Harmless hit the shirt of wampum,
Harmless fell the blows he dealt it
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Harmless fell the heavy war-club;
It could dash the rocks asunder,
But it could not break the meshes
Of that magic shirt of wampum.

Till at sunset Hiawatha,
Leaning on his bow of ash-tree,
Wounded, weary, and desponding,
With his mighty war-club broken,
With his mittens torn and tattered,
And three useless arrows only,
Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree,
From whose branches trailed the mosses,
And whose trunk was coated over
With the Dead-man’s Moccasin-leather,
With the fungus white and yellow.

Suddenly from the boughs above him
Sang the Mama, the woodpecker:
“Aim your arrows, Hiawatha,
At the head of Megissogwon,
Strike the tuft of hair upon it,
At their roots the long black tresses;
There alone can he be wounded!”

Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper,
Swift flew Hiawatha’s arrow,
Just as Megissogwon, stooping,
Raised a heavy stone to throw it.
Full upon the crown it struck him,
At the roots of his long tresses,
And he reeled and staggered forward,
Plunging like a wounded bison,
Yes, like Pezhekee, the bison,
When the snow is on the prairie.

Swifter flew the second arrow,
In the pathway of the other,
Piercing deeper than the other,
Wounding sorer than the other;
And the knees of Megissogwon
Shook like windy reeds beneath him,
Bent and trembled like the rushes.

But the third and latest arrow
Swiftest flew, and wounded sorest,
And the mighty Megissogwon
Saw the fiery eyes of Pauguk,
Saw the eyes of Death glare at him,
Heard his voice call in the darkness;
At the feet of Hiawatha
Lifeless lay the great Pearl-Feather,
Lay the mightiest of Magicians.

Then the grateful Hiawatha
Called the Mama, the woodpecker,
From his perch among the branches
Of the melancholy pine-tree,
And, in honor of his service,
Stained with blood the tuft of feathers
On the little head of Mama;
Even to this day he wears it,
Wears the tuft of crimson feathers,
As a symbol of his service.

Then he stripped the shirt of wampum
From the back of Megissogwon,
As a trophy of the battle,
As a signal of his conquest.
On the shore he left the body,
Half on land and half in water,
In the sand his feet were buried,
And his face was in the water.
And above him, wheeled and clamored
The Keneu, the great war-eagle,
Sailing round in narrower circles,
Hovering nearer, nearer, nearer.

From the wigwam Hiawatha
Bore the wealth of Megissogwon,
All his wealth of skins and wampum,
Furs of bison and of beaver,
Furs of sable and of ermine,
Wampum belts and strings and pouches,
Quivers wrought with beads of wampum,
Filled with arrows, silver-headed.

Homeward then he sailed exulting,
Homeward through the black pitch-water,
Homeward through the weltering serpents,
With the trophies of the battle,
With a shout and song of triumph.

On the shore stood old Nokomis,
On the shore stood Chibiabos,
And the very strong man, Kwasind,
Waiting for the hero’s coming,
Listening to his songs of triumph.
And the people of the village
Welcomed him with songs and dances,
Made a joyous feast, and shouted:
“Honor be to Hiawatha!
He has slain the great Pearl-Feather,
Slain the mightiest of Magicians,
Him, who sent the fiery fever,
Sent the white fog from the fen-lands,
Sent disease and death among us!”

Ever dear to Hiawatha
Was the memory of Mama!
And in token of his friendship,
As a mark of his remembrance,
He adorned and decked his pipe-stem
With the crimson tuft of feathers,
With the blood-red crest of Mama.
But the wealth of Megissogwon,
All the trophies of the battle,
He divided with his people,
Shared it equally among them.

X
Hiawatha’s Wooing

“As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman;
Though she bends him, she obeys him,
Though she draws him, yet she follows;
Useless each without the other!”

Thus the youthful Hiawatha
Said within himself and pondered,
Much perplexed by various feelings,
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing,
Dreaming still of Minnehaha,
Of the lovely Laughing Water,
In the land of the Dacotahs.

“Wed a maiden of your people,”
Warning said the old Nokomis;
“Go not eastward, go not westward,
For a stranger, whom we know not!
Like a fire upon the hearth-stone
Is a neighbor’s homely daughter,
Like the starlight or the moonlight
Is the handsomest of strangers!”

Thus dissuading spake Nokomis,
And my Hiawatha answered
Only this: “Dear old Nokomis,
Very pleasant is the firelight,
But I like the starlight better,
Better do I like the moonlight!”

Gravely then said old Nokomis:
“Bring not here an idle maiden,
Bring not here a useless woman,
Hands unskilful, feet unwilling;
Bring a wife with nimble fingers,
Heart and hand that move together,
Feet that run on willing errands!”

Smiling answered Hiawatha:
“In the land of the Dacotahs
Lives the Arrow-maker’s daughter,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Handsomest of all the women.
I will bring her to your wigwam,
She shall run upon your errands,
Be your starlight, moonlight, firelight,
Be the sunlight of my people!”

Still dissuading said Nokomis:
“Bring not to my lodge a stranger
From the land of the Dacotahs!
Very fierce are the Dacotahs,
Often is there war between us,
There are feuds yet unforgotten,
Wounds that ache and still may open!”

Laughing answered Hiawatha:
“For that reason, if no other,
Would I wed the fair Dacotah,
That our tribes might be united,
That old feuds might be forgotten,
And old wounds be healed forever!”

Thus departed Hiawatha
To the land of the Dacotahs,
To the land of handsome women;
Striding over moor and meadow,
Through interminable forests,
Through uninterrupted silence.

With his moccasins of magic,
At each stride a mile he measured;
Yet the way seemed long before him,
And his heart outran his footsteps;
And he journeyed without resting,
Till he heard the cataract’s laughter,
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
Calling to him through the silence.
“Pleasant is the sound!” he murmured,
“Pleasant is the voice that calls me!”

On the outskirts of the forests,
’Twixt the shadow and the sunshine,
Herds of fallow deer were feeding,
But they saw not Hiawatha;
To his bow he whispered, “Fail not!”
To his arrow whispered, “Swerve not!”
Sent it singing on its errand,
To the red heart of the roebuck;
Threw the deer across his shoulder,
And sped forward without pausing.

At the doorway of his wigwam
Sat the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Making arrow-heads of jasper,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony.
At his side, in all her beauty,
Sat the lovely Minnehaha,
Sat his daughter, Laughing Water,
Plaiting mats of flags and rushes
Of the past the old man’s thoughts were,
And the maiden’s of the future.

He was thinking, as he sat there,
Of the days when with such arrows
He had struck the deer and bison,
On the Muskoday, the meadow;
Shot the wild goose, flying southward
On the wing, the clamorous Wawa;
Thinking of the great war-parties,
How they came to buy his arrows,
Could not fight without his arrows.
Ah, no more such noble warriors
Could be found on earth as they were!
Now the men were all like women,
Only used their tongues for weapons!

She was thinking of a hunter,
From another tribe and country,
Young and tall and very handsome,
Who one morning, in the Spring-time,
Came to buy her father’s arrows,
Sat and rested in the wigwam,
Lingered long about the doorway,
Looking back as he departed.
She had heard her father praise him,
Praise his courage and his wisdom;
Would he come again for arrows
To the Falls of Minnehaha?
On the mat her hands lay idle,
And her eyes were very dreamy.

Through their thoughts they heard a footstep,
Heard a rustling in the branches,
And with glowing cheek and forehead,
With the deer upon his shoulders,
Suddenly from out the woodlands
Hiawatha stood before them.

Straight the ancient Arrow-maker
Looked up gravely from his labor,
Laid aside the unfinished arrow,
Bade him enter at the doorway,
Saying, as he rose to meet him,
“Hiawatha, you are welcome!”

At the feet of Laughing Water
Hiawatha laid his burden,
Threw the red deer from his shoulders;
And the maiden looked up at him,
Looked up from her mat of rushes,
Said with gentle look and accent,
“You are welcome, Hiawatha!”

Very spacious was the wigwam,
Made of deer-skins dressed and whitened,
With the Gods of the Dacotahs
Drawn and painted on its curtains,
And so tall the doorway, hardly
Hiawatha stooped to enter,
Hardly touched his eagle-feathers
As he entered at the doorway.

Then uprose the Laughing Water,
From the ground fair Minnehaha,
Laid aside her mat unfinished,
Brought forth food and set before them,
Water brought them from the brooklet,
Gave them food in earthen vessels,
Gave them drink in bowls of bass-wood,
Listened while the guest was speaking,
Listened while her father answered,
But not once her lips she opened,
Not a single word she uttered.

Yes, as in a dream she listened
To the words of Hiawatha,
As he talked of old Nokomis,
Who had nursed him in his childhood,
As he told of his companions,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind,
And of happiness and plenty
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful.

“After many years of warfare,
Many years of strife and bloodshed,
There is peace between the Ojibways
And the tribe of the Dacotahs.”
Thus continued Hiawatha,
And then added, speaking slowly,
“That this peace may last forever,
And our hands be clasped more closely,
And our hearts be more united,
Give me as my wife this maiden,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Loveliest of Dacotah women!”

And the ancient Arrow-maker
Paused a moment ere he answered,
Smoked a little while in silence,
Looked at Hiawatha proudly,
Fondly looked at Laughing Water,
And made answer very gravely:
“Yes, if Minnehaha wishes;
Let your heart speak, Minnehaha!”

And the lovely Laughing Water
Seemed more lovely as she stood there,
Neither willing nor reluctant,
As she went to Hiawatha,
Softly took the seat beside him,
While she said, and blushed to say it,
“I will follow you, my husband!”

This was Hiawatha’s wooing!
Thus it was he won the daughter
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs!

From the wigwam he departed,
Leading with him Laughing Water;
Hand in hand they went together,
Through the woodland and the meadow,
Left the old man standing lonely
At the doorway of his wigwam,
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
Calling to them from the distance,
Crying to them from afar off,
“Fare thee well, O Minnehaha!”

And the ancient Arrow-maker
Turned again unto his labor,
Sat down by his sunny doorway,
Murmuring to himself, and saying:
“Thus it is our daughters leave us,
Those we love, and those who love us!
Just when they have learned to help us,
When we are old and lean upon them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger!”

Pleasant was the journey homeward,
Through interminable forests,
Over meadow, over mountain,
Over river, hill, and hollow.
Short it seemed to Hiawatha,
Though they journeyed very slowly,
Though his pace he checked and slackened
To the steps of Laughing Water.

Over wide and rushing rivers
In his arms he bore the maiden;
Light he thought her as a feather,
As the plume upon his head-gear;
Cleared the tangled pathway for her,
Bent aside the swaying branches,
Made at night a lodge of branches,
And a bed with boughs of hemlock,
And a fire before the doorway
With the dry cones of the pine-tree.

All the travelling winds went with them,
O’er the meadows, through the forest;
All the stars of night looked at them,
Watched with sleepless eyes their slumber;
From his ambush in the oak-tree
Peeped the squirrel, Adjidaumo,
Watched with eager eyes the lovers;
And the rabbit, the Wabasso,
Scampered from the path before them,
Peering, peeping from his burrow,
Sat erect upon his haunches,
Watched with curious eyes the lovers.

Pleasant was the journey homeward!
All the birds sang loud and sweetly
Songs of happiness and heart’s-ease;
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
“Happy are you, Hiawatha,
Having such a wife to love you!”
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
“Happy are you, Laughing Water,
Having such a noble husband!”

From the sky the sun benignant
Looked upon them through the branches,
Saying to them, “O my children,
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow,
Life is checkered shade and sunshine,
Rule by love, O Hiawatha!”

From the sky the moon looked at them,
Filled the lodge with mystic splendors,
Whispered to them, “O my children,
Day is restless, night is quiet,
Man imperious, woman feeble;
Half is mine, although I follow;
Rule by patience, Laughing Water!”

Thus it was they journeyed homeward;
Thus it was that Hiawatha
To the lodge of old Nokomis
Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
Brought the sunshine of his people,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Handsomest of all the women
In the land of the Dacotahs,
In the land of handsome women.

XI
Hiawatha’s Wedding-Feast

You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
How the handsome Yenadizze
Danced at Hiawatha’s wedding;
How the gentle Chibiabos,
He the sweetest of musicians,
Sang his songs of love and longing;
How Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
Told his tales of strange adventure,
That the feast might be more joyous,
That the time might pass more gayly,
And the guests be more contented.

Sumptuous was the feast Nokomis
Made at Hiawatha’s wedding;
All the bowls were made of bass-wood,
White and polished very smoothly,
All the spoons of horn of bison,
Black and polished very smoothly.

She had sent through all the village
Messengers with wands of willow,
As a sign of invitation,
As a token of the feasting;
And the wedding guests assembled,
Clad in all their richest raiment,
Robes of fur and belts of wampum,
Splendid with their paint and plumage,
Beautiful with beads and tassels.

First they ate the sturgeon, Nahma,
And the pike, the Maskenozha,
Caught and cooked by old Nokomis;
Then on pemican they feasted,
Pemican and buffalo marrow,
Haunch of deer and hump of bison,
Yellow cakes of the Mondamin,
And the wild rice of the river.

But the gracious Hiawatha,
And the lovely Laughing Water,
And the careful old Nokomis,
Tasted not the food before them,
Only waited on the others
Only served their guests in silence.

And when all the guests had finished,
Old Nokomis, brisk and busy,
From an ample pouch of otter,
Filled the red-stone pipes for smoking
With tobacco from the South-land,
Mixed with bark of the red willow,
And with herbs and leaves of fragrance.

Then she said, “O Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Dance for us your merry dances,
Dance the Beggar’s Dance to please us,
That the feast may be more joyous,
That the time may pass more gayly,
And our guests be more contented!”

Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He the idle Yenadizze,
He the merry mischief-maker,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Rose among the guests assembled.

Skilled was he in sports and pastimes,
In the merry dance of snow-shoes,
In the play of quoits and ball-play;
Skilled was he in games of hazard,
In all games of skill and hazard,
Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters,
Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones.
Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart,
Called him coward, Shaugodaya,
Idler, gambler, Yenadizze,
Little heeded he their jesting,
Little cared he for their insults,
For the women and the maidens
Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis.

He was dressed in shirt of doeskin,
White and soft, and fringed with ermine,
All inwrought with beads of wampum;
He was dressed in deer-skin leggings,
Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine,
And in moccasins of buck-skin,
Thick with quills and beads embroidered.
On his head were plumes of swan’s down,
On his heels were tails of foxes,
In one hand a fan of feathers,
And a pipe was in the other.

Barred with streaks of red and yellow,
Streaks of blue and bright vermilion,
Shone the face of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
From his forehead fell his tresses,
Smooth, and parted like a woman’s,
Shining bright with oil, and plaited,
Hung with braids of scented grasses,
As among the guests assembled,
To the sound of flutes and singing,
To the sound of drums and voices,
Rose the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis,
And began his mystic dances.

First he danced a solemn measure,
Very slow in step and gesture,
In and out among the pine-trees,
Through the shadows and the sunshine,
Treading softly like a panther.
Then more swiftly and still swifter,
Whirling, spinning round in circles,
Leaping o’er the guests assembled,
Eddying round and round the wigwam,
Till the leaves went whirling with him,
Till the dust and wind together
Swept in eddies round about him.

Then along the sandy margin
Of the lake, the Big-Sea-Water,
On he sped with frenzied gestures,
Stamped upon the sand, and tossed it
Wildly in the air around him;
Till the wind became a whirlwind,
Till the sand was blown and sifted
Like great snowdrifts o’er the landscape,
Heaping all the shores with Sand Dunes,
Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo!

Thus the merry Pau-Puk-Keewis
Danced his Beggar’s Dance to please them,
And, returning, sat down laughing
There among the guests assembled,
Sat and fanned himself serenely
With his fan of turkey-feathers.

Then they said to Chibiabos,
To the friend of Hiawatha,
To the sweetest of all singers,
To the best of all musicians,
“Sing to us, O Chibiabos!
Songs of love and songs of longing,
That the feast may be more joyous,
That the time may pass more gayly,
And our guests be more contented!”

And the gentle Chibiabos
Sang in accents sweet and tender,
Sang in tones of deep emotion,
Songs of love and songs of longing;
Looking still at Hiawatha,
Looking at fair Laughing Water,
Sang he softly, sang in this wise:

“Onaway! Awake, beloved!
Thou the wild-flower of the forest!
Thou the wild-bird of the prairie!
Thou with eyes so soft and fawn-like!

“If thou only lookest at me,
I am happy, I am happy,
As the lilies of the prairie,
When they feel the dew upon them!

“Sweet thy breath is as the fragrance
Of the wild-flowers in the morning,
As their fragrance is at evening,
In the Moon when leaves are falling.

“Does not all the blood within me
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee,
As the springs to meet the sunshine,
In the Moon when nights are brightest?

“Onaway! my heart sings to thee,
Sings with joy when thou art near me,
As the sighing, singing branches
In the pleasant Moon of Strawberries!

“When thou art not pleased, beloved,
Then my heart is sad and darkened,
As the shining river darkens
When the clouds drop shadows on it!

“When thou smilest, my beloved,
Then my troubled heart is brightened,
As in sunshine gleam the ripples
That the cold wind makes in rivers.

“Smiles the earth, and smile the waters,
Smile the cloudless skies above us,
But I lose the way of smiling
When thou art no longer near me!

“I myself, myself! behold me!
Blood of my beating heart, behold me!
Oh awake, awake, beloved!
Onaway! awake, beloved!”

Thus the gentle Chibiabos
Sang his song of love and longing;
And Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
He the friend of old Nokomis,
Jealous of the sweet musician,
Jealous of the applause they gave him,
Saw in all the eyes around him,
Saw in all their looks and gestures,
That the wedding guests assembled
Longed to hear his pleasant stories,
His immeasurable falsehoods.

Very boastful was Iagoo;
Never heard he an adventure
But himself had met a greater;
Never any deed of daring
But himself had done a bolder;
Never any marvellous story
But himself could tell a stranger.

Would you listen to his boasting,
Would you only give him credence,
No one ever shot an arrow
Half so far and high as he had;
Ever caught so many fishes,
Ever killed so many reindeer,
Ever trapped so many beaver!

None could run so fast as he could,
None could dive so deep as he could,
None could swim so far as he could;
None had made so many journeys,
None had seen so many wonders,
As this wonderful Iagoo,
As this marvellous story-teller!
Thus his name became a by-word
And a jest among the people;
And whene’er a boastful hunter
Praised his own address too highly,
Or a warrior, home returning,
Talked too much of his achievements,
All his hearers cried, “Iagoo!
Here’s Iagoo come among us!”

He it was who carved the cradle
Of the little Hiawatha,
Carved its framework out of linden,
Bound it strong with reindeer sinews;
He it was who taught him later
How to make his bows and arrows,
How to make the bows of ash-tree,
And the arrows of the oak-tree.
So among the guests assembled
At my Hiawatha’s wedding
Sat Iagoo, old and ugly,
Sat the marvellous story-teller.

And they said, “O good Iagoo,
Tell us now a tale of wonder,
Tell us of some strange adventure,
That the feast may be more joyous,
That the time may pass more gayly,
And our guests be more contented!”

And Iagoo answered straightway,
“You shall hear a tale of wonder,
You shall hear the strange adventures
Of Osseo, the Magician,
From the Evening Star descending.”

XII
The Son of the Evening Star

Can it be the sun descending
O’er the level plain of water?
Or the Red Swan floating, flying,
Wounded by the magic arrow,
Staining all the waves with crimson,
With the crimson of its life-blood,
Filling all the air with splendor,
With the splendor of its plumage?

Yes; it is the sun descending,
Sinking down into the water;
All the sky is stained with purple,
All the water flushed with crimson!
No; it is the Red Swan floating,
Diving down beneath the water;
To the sky its wings are lifted,
With its blood the waves are reddened!

Over it the Star of Evening
Melts and trembles through the purple,
Hangs suspended in the twilight.
No; it is a bead of wampum
On the robes of the Great Spirit
As he passes through the twilight,
Walks in silence through the heavens.

This with joy beheld Iagoo
And he said in haste: “Behold it!
See the sacred Star of Evening!
You shall hear a tale of wonder,
Hear the story of Osseo,
Son of the Evening Star, Osseo!

“Once, in days no more remembered,
Ages nearer the beginning,
When the heavens were closer to us,
And the Gods were more familiar,
In the North-land lived a hunter,
With ten young and comely daughters,
Tall and lithe as wands of willow;
Only Oweenee, the youngest,
She the wilful and the wayward,
She the silent, dreamy maiden,
Was the fairest of the sisters.

“All these women married warriors,
Married brave and haughty husbands;
Only Oweenee, the youngest,
Laughed and flouted all her lovers,
All her young and handsome suitors,
And then married old Osseo,
Old Osseo, poor and ugly,
Broken with age and weak with coughing,
Always coughing like a squirrel.

“Ah, but beautiful within him
Was the spirit of Osseo,
From the Evening Star descended,
Star of Evening, Star of Woman,
Star of tenderness and passion!
All its fire was in his bosom,
All its beauty in his spirit,
All its mystery in his being,
All its splendor in his language!

“And her lovers, the rejected,
Handsome men with belts of wampum,
Handsome men with paint and feathers.
Pointed at her in derision,
Followed her with jest and laughter.
But she said: ‘I care not for you,
Care not for your belts of wampum,
Care not for your paint and feathers,
Care not for your jests and laughter;
I am happy with Osseo!’

“Once to some great feast invited,
Through the damp and dusk of evening,
Walked together the ten sisters,
Walked together with their husbands;
Slowly followed old Osseo,
With fair Oweenee beside him;
All the others chatted gayly,
These two only walked in silence.

“At the western sky Osseo
Gazed intent, as if imploring,
Often stopped and gazed imploring
At the trembling Star of Evening,
At the tender Star of Woman;
And they heard him murmur softly,
‘Ah, showain nemeshin, Nosa!
Pity, pity me, my father!’

“‘Listen!’ said the eldest sister,
‘He is praying to his father!
What a pity that the old man
Does not stumble in the pathway,
Does not break his neck by falling!’
And they laughed till all the forest
Rang with their unseemly laughter.

“On their pathway through the woodlands
Lay an oak, by storms uprooted,
Lay the great trunk of an oak-tree,
Buried half in leaves and mosses,
Mouldering, crumbling, huge and hollow.
And Osseo, when he saw it,
Gave a shout, a cry of anguish,
Leaped into its yawning cavern,
At one end went in an old man,
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly;
From the other came a young man,
Tall and straight and strong and handsome.

“Thus Osseo was transfigured,
Thus restored to youth and beauty;
But, alas for good Osseo,
And for Oweenee, the faithful!
Strangely, too, was she transfigured.
Changed into a weak old woman,
With a staff she tottered onward,
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly!
And the sisters and their husbands
Laughed until the echoing forest
Rang with their unseemly laughter.

“But Osseo turned not from her,
Walked with slower step beside her,
Took her hand, as brown and withered
As an oak-leaf is in Winter,
Called her sweetheart, Nenemoosha,
Soothed her with soft words of kindness,
Till they reached the lodge of feasting,
Till they sat down in the wigwam,
Sacred to the Star of Evening,
To the tender Star of Woman.

“Wrapt in visions, lost in dreaming,
At the banquet sat Osseo;
All were merry, all were happy,
All were joyous but Osseo.
Neither food nor drink he tasted,
Neither did he speak nor listen;
But as one bewildered sat he,
Looking dreamily and sadly,
First at Oweenee, then upward
At the gleaming sky above them.

“Then a voice was heard, a whisper,
Coming from the starry distance,
Coming from the empty vastness,
Low, and musical, and tender;
And the voice said: ‘O Osseo!
O my son, my best beloved!
Broken are the spells that bound you,
All the charms of the magicians,
All the magic powers of evil;
Come to me; ascend, Osseo!

“‘Taste the food that stands before you:
It is blessed and enchanted,
It has magic virtues in it,
It will change you to a spirit.
All your bowls and all your kettles
Shall be wood and clay no longer;
But the bowls be changed to wampum,
And the kettles shall be silver;
They shall shine like shells of scarlet,
Like the fire shall gleam and glimmer.

“‘And the women shall no longer
Bear the dreary doom of labor,
But be changed to birds, and glisten
With the beauty of the starlight,
Painted with the dusky splendors
Of the skies and clouds of evening!’

“What Osseo heard as whispers,
What as words he comprehended,
Was but music to the others,
Music as of birds afar off,
Of the whippoorwill afar off,
Of the lonely Wawonaissa
Singing in the darksome forest.

“Then the lodge began to tremble,
Straight began to shake and tremble,
And they felt it rising, rising,
Slowly through the air ascending,
From the darkness of the tree-tops
Forth into the dewy starlight,
Till it passed the topmost branches;
And behold! the wooden dishes
All were changed to shells of scarlet!
And behold! the earthen kettles
All were changed to bowls of silver!
And the roof-poles of the wigwam
Were as glittering rods of silver,
And the roof of bark upon them
As the shining shards of beetles.

“Then Osseo gazed around him,
And he saw the nine fair sisters,
All the sisters and their husbands,
Changed to birds of various plumage.
Some were jays and some were magpies,
Others thrushes, others blackbirds;
And they hopped, and sang, and twittered,
Perked and fluttered all their feathers,
Strutted in their shining plumage,
And their tails like fans unfolded.

“Only Oweenee, the youngest,
Was not changed, but sat in silence,
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly,
Looking sadly at the others;
Till Osseo, gazing upward,
Gave another cry of anguish,
Such a cry as he had uttered
By the oak-tree in the forest.
“Then returned her youth and beauty,
And her soiled and tattered garments
Were transformed to robes of ermine,
And her staff became a feather,
Yes, a shining silver feather!

“And again the wigwam trembled,
Swayed and rushed through airy currents,
Through transparent cloud and vapor,
And amid celestial splendors
On the Evening Star alighted,
As a snow-flake falls on snow-flake,
As a leaf drops on a river,
As the thistledown on water.

“Forth with cheerful words of welcome
Came the father of Osseo,
He with radiant locks of silver,
He with eyes serene and tender.
And he said: ‘My son, Osseo,
Hang the cage of birds you bring there,
Hang the cage with rods of silver,
And the birds with glistening feathers,
At the doorway of my wigwam.’

“At the door he hung the bird-cage,
And they entered in and gladly
Listened to Osseo’s father,
Ruler of the Star of Evening,
As he said: ‘O my Osseo!
I have had compassion on you,
Given you back your youth and beauty,
Into birds of various plumage
Changed your sisters and their husbands;
Changed them thus because they mocked you
In the figure of the old man,
In that aspect sad and wrinkled,
Could not see your heart of passion,
Could not see your youth immortal;
Only Oweenee, the faithful,
Saw your naked heart and loved you.

“‘In the lodge that glimmers yonder,
In the little star that twinkles
Through the vapors, on the left hand,
Lives the envious Evil Spirit,
The Wabeno, the magician,
Who transformed you to an old man.
Take heed lest his beams fall on you,
For the rays he darts around him
Are the power of his enchantment,
Are the arrows that he uses.’

“Many years, in peace and quiet,
On the peaceful Star of Evening
Dwelt Osseo with his father;
Many years, in song and flutter,
At the doorway of the wigwam,
Hung the cage with rods of silver,
And fair Oweenee, the faithful,
Bore a son unto Osseo,
With the beauty of his mother,
With the courage of his father.

“And the boy grew up and prospered,
And Osseo, to delight him,
Made him little bows and arrows,
Opened the great cage of silver,
And let loose his aunts and uncles,
All those birds with glossy feathers,
For his little son to shoot at.

“Round and round they wheeled and darted,
Filled the Evening Star with music,
With their songs of joy and freedom
Filled the Evening Star with splendor,
With the fluttering of their plumage;
Till the boy, the little hunter,
Bent his bow and shot an arrow,
Shot a swift and fatal arrow,
And a bird, with shining feathers,
At his feet fell wounded sorely.

“But, O wondrous transformation!
’T was no bird he saw before him,
’T was a beautiful young woman,
With the arrow in her bosom!

“When her blood fell on the planet,
On the sacred Star of Evening,
Broken was the spell of magic,
Powerless was the strange enchantment,
And the youth, the fearless bowman,
Suddenly felt himself descending,
Held by unseen hands, but sinking
Downward through the empty spaces,
Downward through the clouds and vapors,
Till he rested on an island,
On an island, green and grassy,
Yonder in the Big-Sea-Water.

“After him he saw descending
All the birds with shining feathers,
Fluttering, falling, wafted downward,
Like the painted leaves of Autumn;
And the lodge with poles of silver,
With its roof like wings of beetles,
Like the shining shards of beetles,
By the winds of heaven uplifted,
Slowly sank upon the island,
Bringing back the good Osseo,
Bringing Oweenee, the faithful.

“Then the birds, again transfigured,
Reassumed the shape of mortals,
Took their shape, but not their stature;
They remained as Little People,
Like the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies,
And on pleasant nights of Summer,
When the Evening Star was shining,
Hand in hand they danced together
On the island’s craggy headlands,
On the sand-beach low and level.

“Still their glittering lodge is seen there,
On the tranquil Summer evenings,
And upon the shore the fisher
Sometimes hears their happy voices,
Sees them dancing in the starlight !”

When the story was completed,
When the wondrous tale was ended,
Looking round upon his listeners,
Solemnly Iagoo added:
“There are great men, I have known such,
Whom their people understand not,
Whom they even make a jest of,
Scoff and jeer at in derision.
From the story of Osseo
Let us learn the fate of jesters!”

All the wedding guests delighted
Listened to the marvellous story,
Listened laughing and applauding,
And they whispered to each other:
“Does he mean himself, I wonder?
And are we the aunts and uncles?”

Then again sang Chibiabos,
Sang a song of love and longing,
In those accents sweet and tender,
In those tones of pensive sadness,
Sang a maiden’s lamentation
For her lover, her Algonquin.

“When I think of my beloved,
Ah me! think of my beloved,
When my heart is thinking of him,
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!

“Ah me! when I parted from him,
Round my neck he hung the wampum,
As a pledge, the snow-white wampum,
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!

“‘I will go with you,’ he whispered,
‘Ah me! to your native country;
Let me go with you,’ he whispered,
‘O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!’
‘Far away, away,’ I answered,
‘Very far away,’ I answered,
‘Ah me! is my native country,
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!’

“When I looked back to behold him,
Where we parted, to behold him,
After me he still was gazing,
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!

“By the tree he still was standing,
By the fallen tree was standing,
That had dropped into the water,
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!
“When I think of my beloved,
Ah me! think of my beloved,
When my heart is thinking of him,
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin!”
Such was Hiawatha’s Wedding,
Such the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Such the story of Iagoo,
Such the songs of Chibiabos;
Thus the wedding banquet ended,
And the wedding guests departed,
Leaving Hiawatha happy
With the night and Minnehaha.

XIII
Blessing the Cornfields

Sing, O Song of Hiawatha,
Of the happy days that followed,
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful!
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin,
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields!

Buried was the bloody hatchet,
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons,
And the war-cry was forgotten.
There was peace among the nations;
Unmolested roved the hunters,
Built the birch canoe for sailing,
Caught the fish in lake and river,
Shot the deer and trapped the beaver;
Unmolested worked the women,
Made their sugar from the maple,
Gathered wild rice in the meadows,
Dressed the skins of deer and beaver.

All around the happy village
Stood the maize-fields, green and shining,
Waved the green plumes of Mondamin,
Waved his soft and sunny tresses,
Filling all the land with plenty.
’T was the women who in Spring-time
Planted the broad fields and fruitful,
Buried in the earth Mondamin;
’T was the women who in Autumn
Stripped the yellow husks of harvest,
Stripped the garments from Mondamin,
Even as Hiawatha taught them.

Once, when all the maize was planted,
Hiawatha, wise and thoughtful,
Spake and said to Minnehaha,
To his wife, the Laughing Water:
“You shall bless to-night the cornfields,
Draw a magic circle round them,
To protect them from destruction,
Blast of mildew, blight of insect,
Wagemin, the thief of cornfields,
Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear.

“In the night, when all is silence,’
In the night, when all is darkness,
When the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,
Shuts the doors of all the wigwams,
So that not an ear can hear you,
So that not an eye can see you,
Rise up from your bed in silence,
Lay aside your garments wholly,
Walk around the fields you planted,
Round the borders of the cornfields,
Covered by your tresses only,
Robed with darkness as a garment.

“Thus the fields shall be more fruitful,
And the passing of your footsteps
Draw a magic circle round them,
So that neither blight nor mildew,
Neither burrowing worm nor insect,
Shall pass o’er the magic circle;
Not the dragon-fly, Kwo-ne-she,
Nor the spider, Subbekashe,
Nor the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena;
Nor the mighty caterpillar,
Way-muk-kwana, with the bear-skin,
King of all the caterpillars!”

On the tree-tops near the cornfields
Sat the hungry crows and ravens,
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
With his band of black marauders.
And they laughed at Hiawatha,
Till the tree-tops shook with laughter,
With their melancholy laughter,
At the words of Hiawatha.
“Hear him!” said they; “hear the Wise Man,
Hear the plots of Hiawatha!”

When the noiseless night descended
Broad and dark o’er field and forest,
When the mournful Wawonaissa
Sorrowing sang among the hemlocks,
And the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,
Shut the doors of all the wigwams,
From her bed rose Laughing Water,
Laid aside her garments wholly,
And with darkness clothed and guarded,
Unashamed and unaffrighted,
Walked securely round the cornfields,
Drew the sacred, magic circle
Of her footprints round the cornfields.

No one but the Midnight only
Saw her beauty in the darkness,
No one but the Wawonaissa
Heard the panting of her bosom
Guskewau, the darkness, wrapped her
Closely in his sacred mantle,
So that none might see her beauty,
So that none might boast, “I saw her!”

On the morrow, as the day dawned,
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
Gathered all his black marauders,
Crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens,
Clamorous on the dusky tree-tops,
And descended, fast and fearless,
On the fields of Hiawatha,
On the grave of the Mondamin.

“We will drag Mondamin,” said they,
“From the grave where he is buried,
Spite of all the magic circles
Laughing Water draws around it,
Spite of all the sacred footprints
Minnehaha stamps upon it!”

But the wary Hiawatha,
Ever thoughtful, careful, watchful,
Had o’erheard the scornful laughter
When they mocked him from the tree-tops.
“Kaw!” he said, “my friends the ravens!
Kahgahgee, my King of Ravens!
I will teach you all a lesson
That shall not be soon forgotten!”

He had risen before the daybreak,
He had spread o’er all the cornfields
Snares to catch the black marauders,
And was lying now in ambush
In the neighboring grove of pine-trees,
Waiting for the crows and blackbirds,
Waiting for the jays and ravens.

Soon they came with caw and clamor,
Rush of wings and cry of voices,
To their work of devastation,
Settling down upon the cornfields,
Delving deep with beak and talon,
For the body of Mondamin.
And with all their craft and cunning,
All their skill in wiles of warfare,
They perceived no danger near them,
Till their claws became entangled,
Till they found themselves imprisoned
In the snares of Hiawatha.

From his place of ambush came he,
Striding terrible among them,
And so awful was his aspect
That the bravest quailed with terror.
Without mercy he destroyed them
Right and left, by tens and twenties,
And their wretched, lifeless bodies
Hung aloft on poles for scarecrows
Round the consecrated cornfields,
As a signal of his vengeance,
As a warning to marauders.

Only Kahgahgee, the leader,
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
He alone was spared among them
As a hostage for his people.
With his prisoner-string he bound him,
Led him captive to his wigwam,
Tied him fast with cords of elm-bark
To the ridge-pole of his wigwam.

“Kahgahgee, my raven!” said he,
“You the leader of the robbers,
You the plotter of this mischief,
The contriver of this outrage,
I will keep you, I will hold you,
As a hostage for your people,
As a pledge of good behavior!”

And he left him, grim and sulky,
Sitting in the morning sunshine
On the summit of the wigwam,
Croaking fiercely his displeasure,
Flapping his great sable pinions,
Vainly struggling for his freedom,
Vainly calling on his people!

Summer passed, and Shawondasee
Breathed his sighs o’er all the landscape,
From the South-land sent his ardor,
Wafted kisses warm and tender;
And the maize-field grew and ripened,
Till it stood in all the splendor
Of its garments green and yellow,
Of its tassels and its plumage,
And the maize-ears full and shining
Gleamed from bursting sheaths of verdure.

Then Nokomis, the old woman,
Spake, and said to Minnehaha:

“’T is the Moon when, leaves are falling;
All the wild rice has been gathered,
And the maize is ripe and ready;
Let us gather in the harvest,
Let us wrestle with Mondamin,
Strip him of his plumes and tassels,
Of his garments green and yellow!”

And the merry Laughing Water
Went rejoicing from the wigwam,
With Nokomis, old and wrinkled,
And they called the women round them,
Called the young men and the maidens,
To the harvest of the cornfields,
To the husking of the maize-ear.

On the border of the forest,
Underneath the fragrant pine-trees,
Sat the old men and the warriors
Smoking in the pleasant shadow.
In uninterrupted silence
Looked they at the gamesome labor
Of the young men and the women;
Listened to their noisy talking,
To their laughter and their singing,
Heard them chattering like the magpies,
Heard them laughing like the blue-jays,
Heard them singing like the robins.

And whene’er some lucky maiden
Found a red ear in the husking,
Found a maize-ear red as blood is,
“Nushka!” cried they all together,
“Nushka! you shall have a sweetheart,
You shall have a handsome husband!”
“Ugh!” the old men all responded
From their seats beneath the pine-trees.

And whene’er a youth or maiden
Found a crooked ear in husking,
Found a maize-ear in the husking
Blighted, mildewed, or misshapen,
Then they laughed and sang together,
Crept and limped about the cornfields,
Mimicked in their gait and gestures
Some old man, bent almost double,
Singing singly or together:
“Wagemin, the thief of cornfields!
Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear!”

Till the cornfields rang with laughter,
Till from Hiawatha’s wigwam
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
Screamed and quivered in his anger,
And from all the neighboring tree-tops
Cawed and croaked the black marauders.
“Ugh!” the old men all responded,
From their seats beneath the pine-trees!

XIV
Picture-Writing

In those days said Hiawatha,
“Lo! how all things fade and perish!
From the memory of the old men
Pass away the great traditions,
The achievements of the warriors,
The adventures of the hunters,
All the wisdom of the Medas,
All the craft of the Wabenos,
All the marvellous dreams and visions
Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets!

“Great men die and are forgotten,
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom
Perish in the ears that hear them,
Do not reach the generations
That, as yet unborn, are waiting
In the great, mysterious darkness
Of the speechless days that shall be!

“On the grave-posts of our fathers
Are no signs, no figures painted;
Who are in those graves we know not,
Only know they are our fathers.
Of what kith they are and kindred,
From what old, ancestral Totem,
Be it Eagle, Bear, or Beaver,
They descended, this we know not,
Only know they are our fathers.

“Face to face we speak together,
But we cannot speak when absent,
Cannot send our voices from us
To the friends that dwell afar off;
Cannot send a secret message,
But the bearer learns our secret,
May pervert it, may betray it,
May reveal it unto others.”
Thus said Hiawatha, walking
In the solitary forest,
Pondering, musing in the forest,
On the welfare of his people.

From his pouch he took his colors,
Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
Painted many shapes and figures,
Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested.

Gitche Manito the Mighty,
He, the Master of Life, was painted
As an egg, with points projecting
To the four winds of the heavens.
Everywhere is the Great Spirit,
Was the meaning of this symbol.

Mitche Manito the Mighty,
He the dreadful Spirit of Evil,
As a serpent was depicted,
As Kenabeek, the great serpent.
Very crafty, very cunning,
Is the creeping Spirit of Evil,
Was the meaning of this symbol.

Life and Death he drew as circles,
Life was white, but Death was darkened;
Sun and moon and stars he painted,
Man and beast, and fish and reptile,
Forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers.

For the earth he drew a straight line,
For the sky a bow above it;
White the space between for daytime,
Filled with little stars for night-time;
On the left a point for sunrise,
On the right a point for sunset,
On the top a point for noontide,
And for rain and cloudy weather
Waving lines descending from it.

Footprints pointing towards a wigwam
Were a sign of invitation,
Were a sign of guests assembling;
Bloody hands with palms uplifted
Were a symbol of destruction,
Were a hostile sign and symbol.

All these things did Hiawatha
Show unto his wondering people,
And interpreted their meaning,
And he said: “Behold, your grave-posts
Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol,
Go and paint them all with figures;
Each one with its household symbol,
With its own ancestral Totem;
So that those who follow after
May distinguish them and know them.”

And they painted on the grave-posts
On the graves yet unforgotten,
Each his own ancestral Totem,
Each the symbol of his household;
Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,
Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver,
Each inverted as a token
That the owner was departed,
That the chief who bore the symbol
Lay beneath in dust and ashes.

And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
The Wabenos, the Magicians,
And the Medicine-men, the Medas,
Painted upon bark and deer-skin
Figures for the songs they chanted,
For each song a separate symbol,
Figures mystical and awful,
Figures strange and brightly colored;
And each figure had its meaning,
Each some magic song suggested.

The Great Spirit, the Creator,
Flashing light through all the heaven;
The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek,
With his bloody crest erected,
Creeping, looking into heaven;
In the sky the sun, that listens,
And the moon eclipsed and dying;
Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk,
And the cormorant, bird of magic;
Headless men, that walk the heavens,
Bodies lying pierced with arrows,
Bloody hands of death uplifted,
Flags on graves, and great war-captains
Grasping both the earth and heaven!

Such as these the shapes they painted
On the birch-bark and the deer-skin;
Songs of war and songs of hunting,
Songs of medicine and of magic,
All were written in these figures,
For each figure had its meaning,
Each its separate song recorded.

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.

First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
’T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, “My painting
Makes me powerful over others.”

Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
And the interpretation, “Listen!
’T is my voice you hear, my singing!”

Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
“I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion!”

Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together
With their hands so clasped together
That they seemed in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, “I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes!”

Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an Island;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, “Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me!”

Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, “Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you!”

And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle;
And the image had this meaning:
“Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper!”

Thus it was that Hiawatha,
In his wisdom, taught the people
All the mysteries of painting,
All the art of Picture-Writing,
On the smooth bark of the birch-tree,
On the white skin of the reindeer,
On the grave-posts of the village.

XV
Hiawatha’s Lamentation

In those days the Evil Spirits,
All the Manitos of mischief,
Fearing Hiawatha’s wisdom,
And his love for Chibiabos,
Jealous of their faithful friendship,
And their noble words and actions,
Made at length a league against them,
To molest them and destroy them.

Hiawatha, wise and wary,
Often said to Chibiabos,
“O my brother! do not leave me,
Lest the Evil Spirits harm you!”
Chibiabos, young and heedless,
Laughing shook his coal-black tresses,
Answered ever sweet and childlike,
“Do not fear for me, O brother!
Harm and evil come not near me!”

Once when Peboan, the Winter,
Roofed with ice the Big-Sea-Water,
When the snow-flakes, whirling downward,
Hissed among the withered oak-leaves,
Changed the pine-trees into wigwams,
Covered all the earth with silence,
Armed with arrows, shod with snow-shoes,
Heeding not his brother’s warning,
Fearing not the Evil Spirits,
Forth to hunt the deer with antlers
All alone went Chibiabos.

Right across the Big-Sea-Water
Sprang with speed the deer before him.
With the wind and snow he followed,
O’er the treacherous ice he followed,
Wild with all the fierce commotion
And the rapture of the hunting.

But beneath, the Evil Spirits
Lay in ambush, waiting for him,
Broke the treacherous ice beneath him,
Dragged him downward to the bottom,
Buried in the sand his body.
Unktahee, the god of water,
He the god of the Dacotahs,
Drowned him in the deep abysses
Of the lake of Gitche Gumee.

From the headlands Hiawatha
Sent forth such a wail of anguish,
Such a fearful lamentation,
That the bison paused to listen,
And the wolves howled from the prairies,
And the thunder in the distance
Starting answered “Baim-wawa!”

Then his face with black he painted,
With his robe his head he covered,
In his wigwam sat lamenting,
Seven long weeks he sat lamenting,
Uttering still this moan of sorrow:

“He is dead, the sweet musician!
He the sweetest of all singers!
He has gone from us forever,
He has moved a little nearer
To the Master of all music,
To the Master of all singing!
O my brother, Chibiabos!”

And the melancholy fir-trees
Waved their dark green fans above him,
Waved their purple cones above him,
Sighing with him to console him,
Mingling with his lamentation
Their complaining, their lamenting.

Came the Spring, and all the forest
Looked in vain for Chibiabos;
Sighed the rivulet, Sebowisha,
Sighed the rushes in the meadow.

From the tree-tops sang the bluebird,
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa,
“Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
He is dead, the sweet musician!”

From the wigwam sang the robin,
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
“Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
He is dead, the sweetest singer!”

And at night through all the forest
Went the whippoorwill complaining,
Wailing went the Wawonaissa,
“Chibiabos! Chibiabos!
He is dead, the sweet musician!
He the sweetest of all singers!”

Then the Medicine-men, the Medas,
The magicians, the Wabenos,
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
Came to visit Hiawatha;
Built a Sacred Lodge beside him,
To appease him, to console him,
Walked in silent, grave procession,
Bearing each a pouch of healing,
Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter,
Filled with magic roots and simples,
Filled with very potent medicines.

When he heard their steps approaching,
Hiawatha ceased lamenting,
Called no more on Chibiabos;
Naught he questioned, naught he answered,
But his mournful head uncovered,
From his face the mourning colors
Washed he slowly and in silence,
Slowly and in silence followed
Onward to the Sacred Wigwam.

There a magic drink they gave him,
Made of Nahma-wusk, the spearmint,
And Wabeno-wusk, the yarrow,
Roots of power, and herbs of healing;
Beat their drums, and shook their rattles;
Chanted singly and in chorus,
Mystic songs like these, they chanted.

“I myself, myself! behold me!
’T is the great Gray Eagle talking;
Come, ye white crows, come and hear him!
The loud-speaking thunder helps me;
All the unseen spirits help me;
I can hear their voices calling,
All around the sky I hear them!
I can blow you strong, my brother,
I can heal you, Hiawatha!”

“Hi-au-ha!” replied the chorus,
“Wayha-way!” the mystic chorus.

Friends of mine are all the serpents!
Hear me shake my skin of hen-hawk!
Mahng, the white loon, I can kill him;
I can shoot your heart and kill it!
I can blow you strong, my brother,
I can heal you, Hiawatha !”

“Hi-au-ha!” replied the chorus,
“Wayhaway!” the mystic chorus.

“I myself, myself! the prophet!
When I speak the wigwam trembles,
Shakes the Sacred Lodge with terror,
Hands unseen begin to shake it!
When I walk, the sky I tread on
Bends and makes a noise beneath me!
I can blow you strong, my brother!
Rise and speak, O Hiawatha!”

“Hi-au-ha!” replied the chorus,
“Way-ha-way!” the mystic chorus.

Then they shook their medicine-pouches
O’er the head of Hiawatha,
Danced their medicine-dance around him;
And upstarting wild and haggard,
Like a man from dreams awakened,
He was healed of all his madness.
As the clouds are swept from heaven,
Straightway from his brain departed
All his moody melancholy;
As the ice is swept from rivers,
Straightway from his heart departed
All his sorrow and affliction.

Then they summoned Chibiabos
From his grave beneath the waters,
From the sands of Gitche Gumee
Summoned Hiawatha’s brother.
And so mighty was the magic
Of that cry and invocation,
That he heard it as he lay there
Underneath the Big-Sea-Water;
From the sand he rose and listened,
Heard the music and the singing,
Came, obedient to the summons,
To the doorway of the wigwam,
But to enter they forbade him.

Through a chink a coal they gave him,
Through the door a burning fire-brand;
Ruler in the Land of Spirits,
Ruler o’er the dead, they made him,
Telling him a fire to kindle
For all those that died thereafter,
Camp-fires for their night encampments
On their solitary journey
To the kingdom of Ponemah,
To the land of the Hereafter.

From the village of his childhood,
From the homes of those who knew him,
Passing silent through the forest,
Like a smoke-wreath wafted sideways,
Slowly vanished Chibiabos!
Where he passed, the branches moved not,
Where he trod, the grasses bent not,
And the fallen leaves of last year
Made no sound beneath his footstep.

Four whole days he journeyed onward
Down the pathway of the dead men;
On the dead-man’s strawberry feasted,
Crossed the melancholy river,
On the swinging log he crossed it,
Came unto the Lake of Silver,
In the Stone Canoe was carried
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the land of ghosts and shadows.

On that journey, moving slowly,
Many weary spirits saw he,
Panting under heavy burdens,
Laden with war-clubs, bows and arrows,
Robes of fur, and pots and kettles,
And with food that friends had given
For that solitary journey.

“Ay! why do the living,” said they,
“Lay such heavy burdens on us!
Better were it to go naked,
Better were it to go fasting,
Than to bear such heavy burdens
On our long and weary journey!”
Forth then issued Hiawatha,
Wandered eastward, wandered westward,
Teaching men the use of simples
And the antidotes for poisons,
And the cure of all diseases.
Thus was first made known to mortals
All the mystery of Medamin,
All the sacred art of healing.

XVI
Pau-Puk-Keewis

You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.

On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
It was he who in his frenzy
Whirled these drifting sands together,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
When, among the guests assembled,
He so merrily and madly
Danced at Hiawatha’s wedding,
Danced the Beggar’s Dance to please them.

Now, in search of new adventures,
From his lodge went Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Came with speed into the village,
Found the young men all assembled
In the lodge of old Iagoo,
Listening to his monstrous stories,
To his wonderful adventures.

He was telling them the story
Of Ojeeg, the Summer-Maker,
How he made a hole in heaven,
How he climbed up into heaven,
And let out the summer-weather,
The perpetual, pleasant Summer;
How the Otter first essayed it;
How the Beaver, Lynx, and Badger
Tried in turn the great achievement,
From the summit of the mountain
Smote their fists against the heavens,
Smote against the sky their foreheads,
Cracked the sky, but could not break it;
How the Wolverine, uprising,
Made him ready for the encounter,
Bent his knees down, like a squirrel,
Drew his arms back, like a cricket.

“Once he leaped,” said old Iagoo,
“Once he leaped, and lo! above him
Bent the sky, as ice in rivers
When the waters rise beneath it;
Twice he leaped, and lo! above him
Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers
When the freshet is at highest!
Thrice he leaped, and lo! above him
Broke the shattered sky asunder,
And he disappeared within it,
And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel,
With a bound went in behind him!”

“Hark you!” shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis
As he entered at the doorway;
“I am tired of all this talking,
Tired of old Iagoo’s stories,
Tired of Hiawatha’s wisdom.
Here is something to amuse you,
Better than this endless talking.”

Then from out his pouch of wolf-skin
Forth he drew, with solemn manner,
All the game of Bowl and Counters,
Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces.
White on one side were they painted,
And vermilion on the other;
Two Kenabeeks or great serpents,
Two Ininewug or wedge-men,
One great war-club, Pugamaugun,
And one slender fish, the Keego,
Four round pieces, Ozawabeeks,
And three Sheshebwug or ducklings.
All were made of bone and painted,
All except the Ozawabeeks;
These were brass, on one side burnished,
And were black upon the other.

In a wooden bowl he placed them,
Shook and jostled them together,
Threw them on the ground before him,
Thus exclaiming and explaining:
“Red side up are all the pieces,
And one great Kenabeek standing
On the bright side of a brass piece,
On a burnished Ozawabeek;
Thirteen tens and eight are counted.”

Then again he shook the pieces,
Shook and jostled them together,
Threw them on the ground before him,
Still exclaiming and explaining:
“White are both the great Kenabeeks,
White the Ininewug, the wedge-men,
Red are all the other pieces;
Five tens and an eight are counted.”

Thus he taught the game of hazard,
Thus displayed it and explained it,
Running through its various chances,
Various changes, various meanings:
Twenty curious eyes stared at him,
Full of eagerness stared at him.

“Many games,” said old Iagoo,
“Many games of skill and hazard
Have I seen in different nations,
Have I played in different countries.
He who plays with old Iagoo
Must have very nimble fingers;
Though you think yourself so skilful,
I can beat you, Pau-Puk-Keewis,
I can even give you lessons
In your game of Bowl and Counters!”

So they sat and played together,
All the old men and the young men,
Played for dresses, weapons, wampum,
Played till midnight, played till morning,
Played until the Yenadizze,
Till the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Of their treasures had despoiled them,
Of the best of all their dresses,
Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine,
Belts of wampum, crests of feathers,
Warlike weapons, pipes and pouches.
Twenty eyes glared wildly at him,
Like the eyes of wolves glared at him.

Said the lucky Pau-Puk-Keewis:
“In my wigwam I am lonely,
In my wanderings and adventures
I have need of a companion,
Fain would have a Meshinauwa,
An attendant and pipe-bearer.
I will venture all these winnings,
All these garments heaped about me,
All this wampum, all these feathers,
On a single throw will venture
All against the young man yonder!”
’T was a youth of sixteen summers,
’T was a nephew of Iagoo;
Face-in-a-Mist, the people called him.

As the fire burns in a pipe-head
Dusky red beneath the ashes,
So beneath his shaggy eyebrows
Glowed the eyes of old Iagoo.
“Ugh!” he answered very fiercely;
“Ugh!” they answered all and each one.

Seized the wooden bowl the old man,
Closely in his bony fingers
Clutched the fatal bowl, Onagon,
Shook it fiercely and with fury,
Made the pieces ring together
As he threw them down before him.

Red were both the great Kenabeeks,
Red the Ininewug, the wedge-men,
Red the Sheshebwug, the ducklings,
Black the four brass Ozawabeeks,
White alone the fish, the Keego;
Only five the pieces counted!

Then the smiling Pau-Puk-Keewis
Shook the bowl and threw the pieces;
Lightly in the air he tossed them,
And they fell about him scattered;
Dark and bright the Ozawabeeks,
Red and white the other pieces,
And upright among the others
One Ininewug was standing,
Even as crafty Pau-Puk-Keewis
Stood alone among the players,
Saying, “Five tens! mine the game is,”

Twenty eyes glared at him fiercely,
Like the eyes of wolves glared at him,
As he turned and left the wigwam,
Followed by his Meshinauwa,
By the nephew of Iagoo,
By the tall and graceful stripling,
Bearing in his arms the winnings,
Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine,
Belts of wampum, pipes and weapons.

“Carry them,” said Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Pointing with his fan of feathers,
“To my wigwam far to eastward,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo!”

Hot and red with smoke and gambling
Were the eyes of Pau-Puk-Keewis
As he came forth to the freshness
Of the pleasant Summer morning.
All the birds were singing gayly,
All the streamlets flowing swiftly,
And the heart of Pau-Puk-Keewis
Sang with pleasure as the birds sing,
Beat with triumph like the streamlets,
As he wandered through the village,
In the early gray of morning,
With his fan of turkey-feathers,
With his plumes and tufts of swan’s down,
Till he reached the farthest wigwam,
Reached the lodge of Hiawatha.

Silent was it and deserted;
No one met him at the doorway,
No one came to bid him welcome;
But the birds were singing round it,
In and out and round the doorway,
Hopping, singing, fluttering, feeding,
And aloft upon the ridge-pole
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,
Sat with fiery eyes, and, screaming,
Flapped his wings at Pau-Puk-Keewis.

“All are gone! the lodge is empty!”
Thus it was spake Pau-Puk-Keewis,
In his heart resolving mischief
“Gone is wary Hiawatha,
Gone the silly Laughing Water,
Gone Nokomis, the old woman,
And the lodge is left unguarded!”

By the neck he seized the raven,
Whirled it round him like a rattle,
Like a medicine-pouch he shook it,
Strangled Kahgahgee, the raven,
From the ridge-pole of the wigwam
Left its lifeless body hanging,
As an insult to its master,
As a taunt to Hiawatha.

With a stealthy step he entered,
Round the lodge in wild disorder
Threw the household things about him,
Piled together in confusion
Bowls of wood and earthen kettles,
Robes of buffalo and beaver,
Skins of otter, lynx, and ermine,
As an insult to Nokomis,
As a taunt to Minnehaha.

Then departed Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Whistling, singing through the forest,
Whistling gayly to the squirrels,
Who from hollow boughs above him
Dropped their acorn-shells upon him,
Singing gayly to the wood birds,
Who from out the leafy darkness
Answered with a song as merry.

Then he climbed the rocky headlands,
Looking o’er the Gitche Gumee,
Perched himself upon their summit,
Waiting full of mirth and mischief
The return of Hiawatha.

Stretched upon his back he lay there;
Far below him splashed the waters,
Plashed and washed the dreamy waters;
Far above him swam the heavens,
Swam the dizzy, dreamy heavens;
Round him hovered, fluttered, rustled
Hiawatha’s mountain chickens,
Flock-wise swept and wheeled about him,
Almost brushed him with their pinions.

And he killed them as he lay there,
Slaughtered them by tens and twenties,
Threw their bodies down the headland,
Threw them on the beach below him,
Till at length Kayoshk, the sea-gull,
Perched upon a crag above them,
Shouted: “It is Pau-Puk-Keewis!
He is slaying us by hundreds!
Send a message to our brother,
Tidings send to Hiawatha!”

XVII
The Hunting of Pau-Puk-Keewis

Full of wrath was Hiawatha
When he came into the village,
Found the people in confusion,
Heard of all the misdemeanors,
All the malice and the mischief,
Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis.

Hard his breath came through his nostrils,
Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered
Words of anger and resentment,
Hot and humming, like a hornet.
“I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Slay this mischief-maker!” said he.
“Not so long and wide the world is,
Not so rude and rough the way is,
That my wrath shall not attain him,
That my vengeance shall not reach him!”

Then in swift pursuit departed
Hiawatha and the hunters
On the trail of Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Through the forest, where he passed it,
To the headlands where he rested;
But they found not Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Only in the trampled grasses,
In the whortleberry-bushes,
Found the couch where he had rested,
Found the impress of his body.

From the lowlands far beneath them,
From the Muskoday, the meadow,
Pau-Puk-Keewis, turning backward,
Made a gesture of defiance,
Made a gesture of derision;
And aloud cried Hiawatha,
From the summit of the mountains:
“Not so long and wide the world is,
Not so rude and rough the way is,
But my wrath shall overtake you,
And my vengeance shall attain you!”

Over rock and over river,
Through bush, and brake, and forest,
Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis;
Like an antelope he bounded,
Till he came unto a streamlet
In the middle of the forest,
To a streamlet still and tranquil,
That had overflowed its margin,
To a dam made by the beavers,
To a pond of quiet water,
Where knee-deep the trees were standing,
Where the water lilies floated,
Where the rushes waved and whispered.

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
On the dam of trunks and branches,
Through whose chinks the water spouted,
O’er whose summit flowed the streamlet.
From the bottom rose the beaver,
Looked with two great eyes of wonder,
Eyes that seemed to ask a question,
At the stranger, Pau-Puk-Keewis.

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
O’er his ankles flowed the streamlet,
Flowed the bright and silvery water,
And he spake unto the beaver,
With a smile he spake in this wise:

“O my friend Ahmeek, the beaver,
Cool and pleasant is the water;
Let me dive into the water,
Let me rest there in your lodges;
Change me, too, into a beaver!”

Cautiously replied the beaver,
With reserve he thus made answer:
“Let me first consult the others,
Let me ask the other beavers.”
Down he sank into the water,
Heavily sank he, as a stone sinks,
Down among the leaves and branches,
Brown and matted at the bottom.

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis,
O’er his ankles flowed the streamlet,
Spouted through the chinks below him,
Dashed upon the stones beneath him,
Spread serene and calm before him,
And the sunshine and the shadows
Fell in flecks and gleams upon him,
Fell in little shining patches,
Through the waving, rustling branches.

From the bottom rose the beavers,
Silently above the surface
Rose one head and then another,
Till the pond seemed full of beavers,
Full of black and shining faces.

To the beavers Pau-Puk-Keewis
Spake entreating, said in this wise:
“Very pleasant is your dwelling,
O my friends! and safe from danger;
Can you not, with all your cunning,
All your wisdom and contrivance,
Change me, too, into a beaver?”

“Yes!” replied Ahmeek, the beaver,
He the King of all the beavers,
“Let yourself slide down among us,
Down into the tranquil water.”

Down into the pond among them
Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis;
Black became his shirt of deer-skin,
Black his moccasins and leggings,
In a broad black tail behind him
Spread his fox-tails and his fringes;
He was changed into a beaver.

“Make me large,” said Pau-Puk-Keewis,
“Make me large and make me larger,
Larger than the other beavers.”
“Yes,” the beaver chief responded,
“When our lodge below you enter,
In our wigwam we will make you
Ten times larger than the others.”

Thus into the clear, brown water
Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis:
Found the bottom covered over
With the trunks of trees and branches,
Hoards of food against the winter,
Piles and heaps against the famine;
Found the lodge with arching doorway,
Leading into spacious chambers.

Here they made him large and larger,
Made him largest of the beavers,
Ten times larger than the others.
“You shall be our ruler,” said they;
“Chief and King of all the beavers.”

But not long had Pau-Puk-Keewis
Sat in state among the beavers,
When there came a voice, of warning
From the watchman at his station
In the water-flags and lilies,
Saying, “Here is Hiawatha!
Hiawatha with his hunters!”

Then they heard a cry above them,
Heard a shouting and a tramping,
Heard a crashing and a rushing,
And the water round and o’er them
Sank and sucked away in eddies,
And they knew their dam was broken.

On the lodge’s roof the hunters
Leaped, and broke it all asunder;
Streamed the sunshine through the crevice,
Sprang the beavers through the doorway,
Hid themselves in deeper water,
In the channel of the streamlet;
But the mighty Pau-Puk-Keewis
Could not pass beneath the doorway;
He was puffed with pride and feeding,
He was swollen like a bladder.

Through the roof looked Hiawatha,
Cried aloud, “O Pau-Puk-Keewis
Vain are all your craft and cunning,
Vain your manifold disguises!
Well I know you, Pau-Puk-Keewis!”
With their clubs they beat and bruised him,
Beat to death poor Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Pounded him as maize is pounded,
Till his skull was crushed to pieces.

Six tall hunters, lithe and limber,
Bore him home on poles and branches,
Bore the body of the beaver;
But the ghost, the Jeebi in him,
Thought and felt as Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Still lived on as Pau-Puk-Keewis.

And it fluttered, strove, and struggled,
Waving hither, waving thither,
As the curtains of a wigwam
Struggle with their thongs of deer-skin,
When the wintry wind is blowing;
Till it drew itself together,
Till it rose up from the body,
Till it took the form and features
Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis
Vanishing into the forest.

But the wary Hiawatha
Saw the figure ere it vanished,
Saw the form of Pau-Puk-Keewis
Glide into the soft blue shadow
Of the pine-trees of the forest;
Toward the squares of white beyond it,
Toward an opening in the forest.
Like a wind it rushed and panted,
Bending all the boughs before it,
And behind it, as the rain comes,
Came the steps of Hiawatha.

To a lake with many islands
Came the breathless Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Where among the water-lilies
Pishnekuh, the brant, were sailing;
Through the tufts of rushes floating,
Steering through the reedy Islands.
Now their broad black beaks they lifted,
Now they plunged beneath the water,
Now they darkened in the shadow,
Now they brightened in the sunshine.

“Pishnekuh!” cried Pau-Puk-Keewis,
“Pishnekuh! my brothers!” said he,
“Change me to a brant with plumage,
With a shining neck and feathers,
Make me large, and make me larger,
Ten times larger than the others.”

Straightway to a brant they changed him,
With two huge and dusky pinions,
With a bosom smooth and rounded,
With a bill like two great paddles,
Made him larger than the others,
Ten times larger than the largest,
Just as, shouting from the forest,
On the shore stood Hiawatha.

Up they rose with cry and clamor,
With a whir and beat of pinions,
Rose up from the reedy Islands,
From the water-flags and lilies.
And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis:
“In your flying, look not downward,
Take good heed and look not downward,
Lest some strange mischance should happen,
Lest some great mishap befall you!”

Fast and far they fled to northward,
Fast and far through mist and sunshine,
Fed among the moors and fen-lands,
Slept among the reeds and rushes.

On the morrow as they journeyed,
Buoyed and lifted by the South-wind,
Wafted onward by the South-wind,
Blowing fresh and strong behind them,
Rose a sound of human voices,
Rose a clamor from beneath them,
From the lodges of a village,
From the people miles beneath them.

For the people of the village
Saw the flock of brant with wonder,
Saw the wings of Pau-Puk-Keewis
Flapping far up in the ether,
Broader than two doorway curtains.

Pau-Puk-Keewis heard the shouting,
Knew the voice of Hiawatha,
Knew the outcry of Iagoo,
And, forgetful of the warning,
Drew his neck in, and looked downward,
And the wind that blew behind him
Caught his mighty fan of feathers,
Sent him wheeling, whirling downward!

All in vain did Pau-Puk-Keewis
Struggle to regain his balance!
Whirling round and round and downward,
He beheld in turn the village
And in turn the flock above him,
Saw the village coming nearer,
And the flock receding farther,
Heard the voices growing louder,
Heard the shouting and the laughter;
Saw no more the flocks above him,
Only saw the earth beneath him;
Dead out of the empty heaven,
Dead among the shouting people,
With a heavy sound and sullen,
Fell the brant with broken pinions.

But his soul, his ghost, his shadow,
Still survived as Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Took again the form and features
Of the handsome Yenadizze,
And again went rushing onward,
Followed fast by Hiawatha,
Crying: “Not so wide the world is,
Not so long and rough the way is,
But my wrath shall overtake you,
But my vengeance shall attain you!”

And so near he came, so near him,
That his hand was stretched to seize him,
His right hand to seize and hold him,
When the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis
Whirled and spun about in circles,
Fanned the air into a whirlwind,
Danced the dust and leaves about him,
And amid the whirling eddies
Sprang into a hollow oak-tree,
Changed himself into a serpent,
Gliding out through root and rubbish.

With his right hand Hiawatha
Smote amain the hollow oak-tree,
Rent it into shreds and splinters,
Left it lying there in fragments.
But in vain; for Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Once again in human figure,
Full in sight ran on before him,
Sped away in gust and whirlwind,
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Westward by the Big-Sea-Water,
Came unto the rocky headlands,
To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone,
Looking over lake and landscape.

And the Old Man of the Mountain,
He the Manito of Mountains,
Opened wide his rocky doorways,
Opened wide his deep abysses,
Giving Pau-Puk-Keewis shelter
In his caverns dark and dreary,
Bidding Pau-Puk-Keewis welcome
To his gloomy lodge of sandstone.

There without stood Hiawatha,
Found the doorways closed against him,
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Smote great caverns in the sandstone,
Cried aloud in tones of thunder,
“Open! I am Hiawatha!”
But the Old Man of the Mountain
Opened not, and made no answer
From the silent crags of sandstone,
From the gloomy rock abysses.

Then he raised his hands to heaven,
Called imploring on the tempest,
Called Waywassimo, the lightning,
And the thunder, Annemeekee;
And they came with night and darkness,
Sweeping down the Big-Sea-Water
From the distant Thunder Mountains;
And the trembling Pau-Puk-Keewis
Heard the footsteps of the thunder,
Saw the red eyes of the lightning,
Was afraid, and crouched and trembled.

Then Waywassimo, the lightning,
Smote the doorways of the caverns,
With his war-club smote the doorways,
Smote the jutting crags of sandstone,
And the thunder, Annemeekee,
Shouted down into the caverns,
Saying, “Where is Pau-Puk-Keewis!”
And the crags fell, and beneath them
Dead among the rocky ruins
Lay the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Lay the handsome Yenadizze,
Slain in his own human figure.

Ended were his wild adventures,
Ended were his tricks and gambols,
Ended all his craft and cunning,
Ended all his mischief-making,
All his gambling and his dancing,
All his wooing of the maidens.

Then the noble Hiawatha
Took his soul, his ghost, his shadow,
Spake and said: “O Pau-Puk-Keewis,
Never more in human figure
Shall you search for new adventures;
Never more with jest and laughter
Dance the dust and leaves in whirlwinds;
But above there in the heavens
You shall soar and sail in circles;
I will change you to an eagle,
To Keneu, the great war-eagle,
Chief of all the fowls with feathers,
Chief of Hiawatha’s chickens.”

And the name of Pau-Puk-Keewis
Lingers still among the people,
Lingers still among the singers,
And among the story-tellers;
And in Winter, when the snow-flakes
Whirl in eddies round the lodges,
When the wind in gusty tumult
O’er the smoke-flue pipes and whistles,
“There,” they cry, “comes Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He is dancing through the village,
He is gathering in his harvest!”

XVIII
The Death of Kwasind

Far and wide among the nations
Spread the name and fame of Kwasind;
No man dared to strive with Kwasind,
No man could compete with Kwasind.
But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies,
They the envious Little People,
They the fairies and the pygmies,
Plotted and conspired against him.

“If this hateful Kwasind,” said they,
“If this great, outrageous fellow
Goes on thus a little longer,
Tearing everything he touches,
Rending everything to pieces,
Filling all the world with wonder,
What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies?
Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies?
He will tread us down like mushrooms,
Drive us all into the water,
Give our bodies to be eaten
By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs,
By the Spirits of the water!”

So the angry Little People
All conspired against the Strong Man,
All conspired to murder Kwasind,
Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind,
The audacious, overbearing,
Heartless, haughty, dangerous Kwasind!

Now this wondrous strength of Kwasind
In his crown alone was seated;
In his crown too was his weakness;
There alone could he be wounded,
Nowhere else could weapon pierce him,
Nowhere else could weapon harm him.

Even there the only weapon
That could wound him, that could slay him,
Was the seed-cone of the pine-tree,
Was the blue cone of the fir-tree.
This was Kwasind’s fatal secret,
Known to no man among mortals;
But the cunning Little People,
The Puk-Wudjies, knew the secret,
Knew the only way to kill him.

So they gathered cones together,
Gathered seed-cones of the pine-tree,
Gathered blue cones of the fir-tree,
In the woods by Taquamenaw,
Brought them to the river’s margin,
Heaped them in great piles together,
Where the red rocks from the margin
Jutting overhang the river.
There they lay in wait for Kwasind,
The malicious Little People.

’T was an afternoon in Summer;
Very hot and still the air was,
Very smooth the gliding river,
Motionless the sleeping shadows:
Insects glistened in the sunshine,
Insects skated on the water,
Filled the drowsy air with buzzing,
With a far resounding war-cry.

Down the river came the Strong Man,
In his birch canoe came Kwasind,
Floating slowly down the current
Of the sluggish Taquamenaw,
Very languid with the weather,
Very sleepy with the silence.

From the overhanging branches,
From the tassels of the birch-trees,
Soft the Spirit of Sleep descended;
By his airy hosts surrounded,
His invisible attendants,
Came the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin;
Like a burnished Dush-kwo-ne-she,
Like a dragon-fly, he hovered
O’er the drowsy head of Kwasind.

To his ear there came a murmur
As of waves upon a sea-shore,
As of far-off tumbling waters,
As of winds among the pine-trees;
And he felt upon his forehead
Blows of little airy war-clubs,
Wielded by the slumbrous legions
Of the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin,
As of some one breathing on him.

At the first blow of their war-clubs,
Fell a drowsiness on Kwasind;
At the second blow they smote him,
Motionless his paddle rested;
At the third, before his vision
Reeled the landscape Into darkness,
Very sound asleep was Kwasind.

So he floated down the river,
Like a blind man seated upright,
Floated down the Taquamenaw,
Underneath the trembling birch-trees,
Underneath the wooded headlands,
Underneath the war encampment
Of the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies.

There they stood, all armed and waiting,
Hurled the pine-cones down upon him,
Struck him on his brawny shoulders,
On his crown defenceless struck him.
“Death to Kwasind!” was the sudden
War-cry of the Little People.

And he sideways swayed and tumbled,
Sideways fell into the river,
Plunged beneath the sluggish water
Headlong, as an otter plunges;
And the birch canoe, abandoned,
Drifted empty down the river,
Bottom upward swerved and drifted:
Nothing more was seen of Kwasind.

But the memory of the Strong Man
Lingered long among the people,
And whenever through the forest
Raged and roared the wintry tempest,
And the branches, tossed and troubled,
Creaked and groaned and split asunder,
“Kwasind!” cried they; “that is Kwasind!
He is gathering in his fire-wood!”

XIX
The Ghosts

Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.

So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one another’s motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.

Now, o’er all the dreary North-land,
Mighty Peboan, the Winter,
Breathing on the lakes and rivers,
Into stone had changed their waters.
From his hair he shook the snow-flakes,
Till the plains were strewn with whiteness,
One uninterrupted level,
As if, stooping, the Creator
With his hand had smoothed them over.

Through the forest, wide and wailing,
Roamed the hunter on his snow-shoes;
In the village worked the women,
Pounded maize, or dressed the deer-skin;
And the young men played together
On the ice the noisy ball-play,
On the plain the dance of snow-shoes.

One dark evening, after sundown,
In her wigwam Laughing Water
Sat with old Nokomis, waiting
For the steps of Hiawatha
Homeward from the hunt returning.

On their faces gleamed the firelight,
Painting them with streaks of crimson,
In the eyes of old Nokomis
Glimmered like the watery moonlight,
In the eyes of Laughing Water
Glistened like the sun in water;
And behind them crouched their shadows
In the corners of the wigwam,
And the smoke in wreaths above them
Climbed and crowded through the smoke-flue.

Then the curtain of the doorway
From without was slowly lifted;
Brighter glowed the fire a moment,
And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath,
As two women entered softly,
Passed the doorway uninvited,
Without word of salutation,
Without sign of recognition,
Sat down in the farthest corner,
Crouching low among the shadows.

From their aspect and their garments,
Strangers seemed they in the village;
Very pale and haggard were they,
As they sat there sad and silent,
Trembling, cowering with the shadows.

Was it the wind above the smoke-flue,
Muttering down into the wigwam?
Was it the owl, the Koko-koho,
Hooting from the dismal forest?
Sure a voice said in the silence:
“These are corpses clad in garments,
These are ghosts that come to haunt you,
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
From the land of the Hereafter!”

Homeward now came Hiawatha
From his hunting in the forest,
With the snow upon his tresses,
And the red deer on his shoulders.
At the feet of Laughing Water
Down he threw his lifeless burden;
Nobler, handsomer she thought him,
Than when first he came to woo her,
First threw down the deer before her,
As a token of his wishes,
As a promise of the future.

Then he turned and saw the strangers,
Cowering, crouching with the shadows;
Said within himself, “Who are they?
What strange guests has Minnehaha?”
But he questioned not the strangers,
Only spake to bid them welcome
To his lodge, his food, his fireside.

When the evening meal was ready,
And the deer had been divided,
Both the pallid guests, the strangers,
Springing from among the shadows,
Seized upon the choicest portions,
Seized the white fat of the roebuck,
Set apart for Laughing Water,
For the wife of Hiawatha;
Without asking, without thanking,
Eagerly devoured the morsels,
Flitted back among the shadows
In the corner of the wigwam.

Not a word spake Hiawatha,
Not a motion made Nokomis,
Not a gesture Laughing Water;
Not a change came o’er their features;
Only Minnehaha softly
Whispered, saying, “They are famished;
Let them do what best delights them;
Let them eat, for they are famished.”

Many a daylight dawned and darkened,
Many a night shook off the daylight
As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes
From the midnight of its branches;
Day by day the guests unmoving
Sat there silent in the wigwam;
But by night, in storm or starlight,
Forth they went into the forest,
Bringing fire-wood to the wigwam,
Bringing pine-cones for the burning,
Always sad and always silent.

And whenever Hiawatha
Came from fishing or from hunting,
When the evening meal was ready,
And the food had been divided,
Gliding from their darksome corner,
Came the pallid guests, the strangers,
Seized upon the choicest portions
Set aside for Laughing Water,
And without rebuke or question
Flitted back among the shadows.

Never once had Hiawatha
By a word or look reproved them;
Never once had old Nokomis
Made a gesture of impatience;
Never once had Laughing Water
Shown resentment at the outrage.
All had they endured in silence,
That the rights of guest and stranger,
That the virtue of free-giving,
By a look might not be lessened,
By a word might not be broken.

Once at midnight Hiawatha,
Ever wakeful, ever watchful,
In the wigwam, dimly lighted
By the brands that still were burning,
By the glimmering, flickering firelight
Heard a sighing, oft repeated,

From his couch rose Hiawatha,
From his shaggy hides of bison,
Pushed aside the deer-skin curtain,
Saw the pallid guests, the shadows,
Sitting upright on their couches,
Weeping in the silent midnight.

And he said: “O guests! why is it
That your hearts are so afflicted,
That you sob so in the midnight?
Has perchance the old Nokomis,
Has my wife, my Minnehaha,
Wronged or grieved you by unkindness,
Failed in hospitable duties?”

Then the shadows ceased from weeping,
Ceased from sobbing and lamenting,
And they said, with gentle voices:
“We are ghosts of the departed,
Souls of those who once were with you.
From the realms of Chibiabos
Hither have we come to try you,
Hither have we come to warn you.

“Cries of grief and lamentation
Reach us in the Blessed Islands;
Cries of anguish from the living,
Calling back their friends departed,
Sadden us with useless sorrow.
Therefore have we come to try you;
No one knows us, no one heeds us.
We are but a burden to you,
And we see that the departed
Have no place among the living.

“Think of this, O Hiawatha!
Speak of it to all the people,
That henceforward and forever
They no more with lamentations
Sadden the souls of the departed
In the Islands of the Blessed.

“Do not lay such heavy burdens
In the graves of those you bury,
Not such weight of furs and wampum,
Not such weight of pots and kettles,
For the spirits faint beneath them.
Only give them food to carry,
Only give them fire to light them.

“Four days is the spirit’s journey
To the land of ghosts and shadows,
Four its lonely night encampments;
Four times must their fires be lighted.
Therefore, when the dead are buried,
Let a fire, as night approaches,
Four times on the grave be kindled,
That the soul upon its journey
May not lack the cheerful firelight,
May not grope about in darkness.

“Farewell, noble Hiawatha!
We have put you to the trial,
To the proof have put your patience,
By the insult of our presence,
By the outrage of our actions.
We have found you great and noble.
Fail not in the greater trial,
Faint not in the harder struggle.”

When they ceased, a sudden darkness
Fell and filled the silent wigwam.
Hiawatha heard a rustle
As of garments trailing by him,
Heard the curtain of the doorway
Lifted by a hand he saw not,
Felt the cold breath of the night air,
For a moment saw the starlight;
But he saw the ghosts no longer,
Saw no more the wandering spirits
From the kingdom of Ponemah,
From the land of the Hereafter.

XX
The Famine

Oh the long and dreary Winter!
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o’er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
In the ghastly, gleaming forest
Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
Perished there from cold and hunger.

Oh the famine and the fever!
Oh the wasting of the famine!
Oh the blasting of the fever!
Oh the wailing of the children!
Oh the anguish of the women!

All the earth was sick and famished;
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,
And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!

Into Hiawatha’s wigwam
Came two other guests, as silent
As the ghosts were, and as gloomy,
Waited not to be invited
Did not parley at the doorway
Sat there without word of welcome
In the seat of Laughing Water;
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow
At the face of Laughing Water.

And the foremost said: “Behold me!
I am Famine, Bukadawin!”
And the other said: “Behold me!
I am Fever, Ahkosewin!”

And the lovely Minnehaha
Shuddered as they looked upon her,
Shuddered at the words they uttered,
Lay down on her bed in silence,
Hid her face, but made no answer;
Lay there trembling, freezing, burning
At the looks they cast upon her,
At the fearful words they uttered.

Forth into the empty forest
Rushed the maddened Hiawatha;
In his heart was deadly sorrow,
In his face a stony firmness;
On his brow the sweat of anguish
Started, but it froze and fell not.

Wrapped in furs and armed for hunting,
With his mighty bow of ash-tree,
With his quiver full of arrows,
With his mittens, Minjekahwun,
Into the vast and vacant forest
On his snow-shoes strode he forward.

“Gitche Manito, the Mighty!”
Cried he with his face uplifted
In that bitter hour of anguish,
“Give your children food, O father!
Give us food, or we must perish!
Give me food for Minnehaha,
For my dying Minnehaha!”

Through the far-resounding forest,
Through the forest vast and vacant
Rang that cry of desolation,
But there came no other answer
Than the echo of his crying,
Than the echo of the woodlands,
“Minnehaha! Minnehaha!”

All day long roved Hiawatha
In that melancholy forest,
Through the shadow of whose thickets,
In the pleasant days of Summer,
Of that ne’er forgotten Summer,
He had brought his young wife homeward
From the land of the Dacotahs;
When the birds sang in the thickets,
And the streamlets laughed and glistened,
And the air was full of fragrance,
And the lovely Laughing Water
Said with voice that did not tremble,
“I will follow you, my husband!”

In the wigwam with Nokomis,
With those gloomy guests that watched her,
With the Famine and the Fever,
She was lying, the Beloved,
She, the dying Minnehaha.

“Hark!” she said; “I hear a rushing,
Hear a roaring and a rushing,
Hear the Falls of Minnehaha
Calling to me from a distance!”
“No, my child!” said old Nokomis,
“’T is the night-wind in the pine-trees!”
“Look!” she said; “I see my father
Standing lonely at his doorway,
Beckoning to me from his wigwam
In the land of the Dacotahs!”
“No, my child!” said old Nokomis.
“’T is the smoke, that waves and beckons!”
“Ah!” said she, “the eyes of Pauguk
Glare upon me in the darkness,
I can feel his icy fingers
Clasping mine amid the darkness!
Hiawatha! Hiawatha!”

And the desolate Hiawatha,
Far away amid the forest,
Miles away among the mountains,
Heard that sudden cry of anguish,
Heard the voice of Minnehaha
Calling to him in the darkness,
“Hiawatha! Hiawatha!”

Over snow-fields waste and pathless,
Under snow-encumbered branches,
Homeward hurried Hiawatha,
Empty-handed, heavy-hearted,
Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing:
“Wahonowin! Wahonowin!
Would that I had perished for you,
Would that I were dead as you are!
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!”

And he rushed into the wigwam,
Saw the old Nokomis slowly
Rocking to and fro and moaning,
Saw his lovely Minnehaha
Lying dead and cold before him,
And his bursting heart within him
Uttered such a cry of anguish,
That the forest moaned and shuddered,
That the very stars in heaven
Shook and trembled with his anguish.

Then he sat down, still and speechless,
On the bed of Minnehaha,
At the feet of Laughing Water,
At those willing feet, that never
More would lightly run to meet him,
Never more would lightly follow.

With both hands his face he covered,
Seven long days and nights he sat there,
As if in a swoon he sat there,
Speechless, motionless, unconscious
Of the daylight or the darkness.

Then they buried Minnehaha;
In the snow a grave they made her
In the forest deep and darksome
Underneath the moaning hemlocks;
Clothed her in her richest garments
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine,
Covered her with snow, like ermine;
Thus they buried Minnehaha.

And at night a fire was lighted,
On her grave four times was kindled,
For her soul upon its journey
To the Islands of the Blessed.
From his doorway Hiawatha
Saw it burning in the forest,
Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks;
From his sleepless bed uprising,
From the bed of Minnehaha,
Stood and watched it at the doorway,
That it might not be extinguished,

Might not leave her in the darkness.
“Farewell!” said he, “Minnehaha!
Farewell, O my Laughing Water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All my thoughts go onward with you!
Come not back again to labor,
Come not back again to suffer,
Where the Famine and the Fever
Wear the heart and waste the body.
Soon my task will be completed,
Soon your footsteps I shall follow
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!”

XXI
The White Man’s Foot

In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.

All the coals were white with ashes,
And the fire was slowly dying,
As a young man, walking lightly,
At the open doorway entered.
Red with blood of youth his cheeks were,
Soft his eyes, as stars in Spring-time,
Bound his forehead was with grasses;
Bound and plumed with scented grasses,
On his lips a smile of beauty,
Filling all the lodge with sunshine,
In his hand a bunch of blossoms
Filling all the lodge with sweetness.

“Ah, my son!” exclaimed the old man,
“Happy are my eyes to see you.
Sit here on the mat beside me,
Sit here by the dying embers,
Let us pass the night together,
Tell me of your strange adventures,
Of the lands where you have travelled;
I will tell you of my prowess,
Of my many deeds of wonder.”

From his pouch he drew his peace-pipe,
Very old and strangely fashioned;
Made of red stone was the pipe-head,
And the stem a reed with feathers;
Filled the pipe with bark of willow,
Placed a burning coal upon it,
Gave it to his guest, the stranger,
And began to speak in this wise:
“When I blow my breath about me,
When I breathe upon the landscape,
Motionless are all the rivers,
Hard as stone becomes the water!”

And the young man answered, smiling:
“When I blow my breath about me,
When I breathe upon the landscape,
Flowers spring up o’er all the meadows,
Singing, onward rush the rivers!”

“When I shake my hoary tresses,”
Said the old man darkly frowning,
“All the land with snow is covered;
All the leaves from all the branches
Fall and fade and die and wither,
For I breathe, and lo! they are not.
From the waters and the marshes,
Rise the wild goose and the heron,
Fly away to distant regions,
For I speak, and lo! they are not.
And where’er my footsteps wander,
All the wild beasts of the forest
Hide themselves in holes and caverns,
And the earth becomes as flintstone!”

“When I shake my flowing ringlets,”
Said the young man, softly laughing,
“Showers of rain fall warm and welcome,
Plants lift up their heads rejoicing,
Back unto their lakes and marshes
Come the wild goose and the heron,
Homeward shoots the arrowy swallow,
Sing the bluebird and the robin,
And where’er my footsteps wander,
All the meadows wave with blossoms,
All the woodlands ring with music,
All the trees are dark with foliage!”

While they spake, the night departed:
From the distant realms of Wabun,
From his shining lodge of silver,
Like a warrior robed and painted,
Came the sun, and said, “Behold me
Gheezis, the great sun, behold me!”

Then the old man’s tongue was speechless
And the air grew warm and pleasant,
And upon the wigwam sweetly
Sang the bluebird and the robin,
And the stream began to murmur,
And a scent of growing grasses
Through the lodge was gently wafted.

And Segwun, the youthful stranger,
More distinctly in the daylight
Saw the icy face before him;
It was Peboan, the Winter!

From his eyes the tears were flowing,
As from melting lakes the streamlets,
And his body shrunk and dwindled
As the shouting sun ascended,
Till into the air it faded,
Till into the ground it vanished,
And the young man saw before him,
On the hearth-stone of the wigwam,
Where the fire had smoked and smouldered,
Saw the earliest flower of Spring-time,
Saw the Beauty of the Spring-time,
Saw the Miskodeed in blossom.

Thus it was that in the North-land
After that unheard-of coldness,
That intolerable Winter,
Came the Spring with all its splendor,
All its birds and all its blossoms,
All its flowers and leaves and grasses.

Sailing on the wind to northward,
Flying in great flocks, like arrows,
Like huge arrows shot through heaven,
Passed the swan, the Mahnahbezee,
Speaking almost as a man speaks;
And in long lines waving, bending
Like a bow-string snapped asunder,
Came the white goose, Waw-be-wawa;
And in pairs, or singly flying,
Mahng the loon, with clangorous pinions,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa.

In the thickets and the meadows
Piped the bluebird, the Owaissa,
On the summit of the lodges
Sang the robin, the Opechee,
In the covert of the pine-trees
Cooed the pigeon, the Omemee;
And the sorrowing Hiawatha,
Speechless in his infinite sorrow,
Heard their voices calling to him,
Went forth from his gloomy doorway,
Stood and gazed into the heaven,
Gazed upon the earth and waters.

From his wanderings far to eastward,
From the regions of the morning,
From the shining land of Wabun,
Homeward now returned Iagoo,
The great traveller, the great boaster,
Full of new and strange adventures,
Marvels many and many wonders.

And the people of the village
Listened to him as he told them
Of his marvellous adventures,
Laughing answered him in this wise:
“Ugh! it is indeed Iagoo!
No one else beholds such wonders!”

He had seen, he said, a water
Bigger than the Big-Sea-Water,
Broader than the Gitche Gumee,
Bitter so that none could drink it!
At each other looked the warriors,
Looked the women at each other,
Smiled, and said, “It cannot be so!”
Kaw!” they said, “it cannot be so!”

O’er it, said he, o’er this water
Came a great canoe with pinions,
A canoe with wings came flying,
Bigger than a grove of pine-trees,
Taller than the tallest tree-tops!
And the old men and the women
Looked and tittered at each other;
“Kaw!” they said, “we don’t believe it!”

From its mouth, he said, to greet him,
Came Waywassimo, the lightning,
Came the thunder, Annemeekee!
And the warriors and the women
Laughed aloud at poor Iagoo;
“Kaw!” they said, “what tales you tell us!”

In it, said he, came a people,
In the great canoe with pinions
Came, he said, a hundred warriors;
Painted white were all their faces
And with hair their chins were covered!
And the warriors and the women
Laughed and shouted in derision,
Like the ravens on the tree-tops,
Like the crows upon the hemlocks.
“Kaw!” they said, “what lies you tell us!
Do not think that we believe them!”

Only Hiawatha laughed not,
But he gravely spake and answered
To their jeering and their jesting:
“True is all Iagoo tells us;
I have seen it in a vision,
Seen the great canoe with pinions,
Seen the people with white faces,
Seen the coming of this bearded
People of the wooden vessel
From the regions of the morning,
From the shining land of Wabun.

“Gitche Manito, the Mighty,
The Great Spirit, the Creator,
Sends them hither on his errand.
Sends them to us with his message.
Wheresoe’er they move, before them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the bee, the honey-maker;
Wheresoe’er they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the White-man’s Foot in blossom.

“Let us welcome, then, the strangers,
Hail them as our friends and brothers,
And the heart’s right hand of friendship
Give them when they come to see us.
Gitche Manito, the Mighty,
Said this to me in my vision.

“I beheld, too, in that vision
All the secrets of the future,
Of the distant days that shall be.
I beheld the westward marches
Of the unknown, crowded nations.
All the land was full of people,
Restless, struggling, toiling, striving,
Speaking many tongues, yet feeling
But one heart-beat in their bosoms.
In the woodlands rang their axes,
Smoked their towns in all the valleys,
Over all the lakes and rivers
Rushed their great canoes of thunder.

“Then a darker, drearier vision
Passed before me, vague and cloud-like;
I beheld our nation scattered,
All forgetful of my counsels,
Weakened, warring with each other:
Saw the remnants of our people
Sweeping westward, wild and woful,
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest,
Like the withered leaves of Autumn!”

XXII
Hiawatha’s Departure

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.
All the air was full of freshness,
All the earth was bright and joyous,
And before him, through the sunshine,
Westward toward the neighboring forest
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo,
Passed the bees, the honey-makers,
Burning, singing in the sunshine.

Bright above him shone the heavens,
Level spread the lake before him;
From its bosom leaped the sturgeon,
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine;
On its margin the great forest
Stood reflected in the water,
Every tree-top had its shadow,
Motionless beneath the water.

From the brow of Hiawatha
Gone was every trace of sorrow,
As the fog from off the water,
As the mist from off the meadow.
With a smile of joy and triumph,
With a look of exultation,
As of one who in a vision
Sees what is to be, but is not,
Stood and waited Hiawatha.

Toward the sun his hands were lifted,
Both the palms spread out against it,
And between the parted fingers
Fell the sunshine on his features,
Flecked with light his naked shoulders,
As it falls and flecks an oak-tree
Through the rifted leaves and branches.

O’er the water floating, flying,
Something in the hazy distance,
Something in the mists of morning,
Loomed and lifted from the water,
Now seemed floating, now seemed flying,
Coming nearer, nearer, nearer.

Was it Shingebis the diver?
Or the pelican, the Shada?
Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah?
Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa,
With the water dripping, flashing,
From its glossy neck and feathers?

It was neither goose nor diver,
Neither pelican nor heron,
O’er the water floating, flying,
Through the shining mist of morning,
But a birch canoe with paddles,
Rising, sinking on the water,
Dripping, flashing in the sunshine;
And within it came a people
From the distant land of Wabun,
From the farthest realms of morning
Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,
He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face,
With his guides and his companions.

And the noble Hiawatha,
With his hands aloft extended,
Held aloft in sign of welcome,
Waited, full of exultation,
Till the birch canoe with paddles
Grated on the shining pebbles,
Stranded on the sandy margin,
Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face,
With the cross upon his bosom,
Landed on the sandy margin.

Then the joyous Hiawatha
Cried aloud and spake in this wise:
“Beautiful is the sun, O strangers,
When you come so far to see us!
All our town in peace awaits you,
All our doors stand open for you;
You shall enter all our wigwams,
For the heart’s right hand we give you.

“Never bloomed the earth so gayly,
Never shone the sun so brightly,
As to-day they shine and blossom
When you come so far to see us!
Never was our lake so tranquil,
Nor so free from rocks, and sand-bars;
For your birch canoe in passing
Has removed both rock and sand-bar.
“Never before had our tobacco
Such a sweet and pleasant flavor,
Never the broad leaves of our cornfields
Were so beautiful to look on,
As they seem to us this morning,
When you come so far to see us!’

And the Black-Robe chief made answer,
Stammered in his speech a little,
Speaking words yet unfamiliar:
“Peace be with you, Hiawatha,
Peace be with you and your people,
Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon,
Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary!”

Then the generous Hiawatha
Led the strangers to his wigwam,
Seated them on skins of bison,
Seated them on skins of ermine,
And the careful old Nokomis
Brought them food in bowls of basswood,
Water brought in birchen dippers,
And the calumet, the peace-pipe,
Filled and lighted for their smoking.

All the old men of the village,
All the warriors of the nation,
All the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
The magicians, the Wabenos,
And the Medicine-men, the Medas,
Came to bid the strangers welcome;
“It is well”, they said, “O brothers,
That you come so far to see us!”

In a circle round the doorway,
With their pipes they sat in silence,
Waiting to behold the strangers,
Waiting to receive their message;
Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face,
From the wigwam came to greet them,
Stammering in his speech a little,
Speaking words yet unfamiliar;
“It is well,” they said, “O brother,
That you come so far to see us!”

Then the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet,
Told his message to the people,
Told the purport of his mission,
Told them of the Virgin Mary,
And her blessed Son, the Saviour,
How in distant lands and ages
He had lived on earth as we do;
How he fasted, prayed, and labored;
How the Jews, the tribe accursed,
Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him;
How he rose from where they laid him,
Walked again with his disciples,
And ascended into heaven.

And the chiefs made answer, saying:
“We have listened to your message,
We have heard your words of wisdom,
We will think on what you tell us.
It is well for us, O brothers,
That you come so far to see us!”

Then they rose up and departed
Each one homeward to his wigwam,
To the young men and the women
Told the story of the strangers
Whom the Master of Life had sent them
From the shining land of Wabun.

Heavy with the heat and silence
Grew the afternoon of Summer;
With a drowsy sound the forest
Whispered round the sultry wigwam,
With a sound of sleep the water
Rippled on the beach below it;
From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless
Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena;
And the guests of Hiawatha,
Weary with the heat of Summer,
Slumbered in the sultry wigwam.

Slowly o’er the simmering landscape
Fell the evening’s dusk and coolness,
And the long and level sunbeams
Shot their spears into the forest,
Breaking through its shields of shadow,
Rushed into each secret ambush,
Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow;
Still the guests of Hiawatha
Slumbered in the silent wigwam.

From his place rose Hiawatha,
Bade farewell to old Nokomis,
Spake in whispers, spake in this wise,
Did not wake the guests, that slumbered.

“I am going, O Nokomis,
On a long and distant journey,
To the portals of the Sunset.
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin.
But these guests I leave behind me,
In your watch and ward I leave them;
See that never harm comes near them,
See that never fear molests them,
Never danger nor suspicion,
Never want of food or shelter,
In the lodge of Hiawatha!”

Forth into the village went he,
Bade farewell to all the warriors,
Bade farewell to all the young men,
Spake persuading, spake in this wise:

“I am going, O my people,
On a long and distant journey;
Many moons and many winters
Will have come, and will have vanished,
Ere I come again to see you.
But my guests I leave behind me;
Listen to their words of wisdom,
Listen to the truth they tell you,
For the Master of Life has sent them
From the land of light and morning!”

On the shore stood Hiawatha,
Turned and waved his hand at parting;
On the clear and luminous water
Launched his birch canoe for sailing,
From the pebbles of the margin
Shoved it forth into the water;
Whispered to it, “Westward! westward!”
And with speed it darted forward.

And the evening sun descending
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,
Left upon the level water
One long track and trail of splendor,
Down whose stream, as down a river,
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening:

And the people from the margin
Watched him floating, rising, sinking,
Till the birch canoe seemed lifted
High into that sea of splendor,
Till it sank into the vapors
Like the new moon slowly, slowly
Sinking in the purple distance.

And they said, “Farewell forever!”
Said, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”
And the forests, dark and lonely,
Moved through all their depths of darkness,
Sighed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”
And the waves upon the margin
Rising, rippling on the pebbles,
Sobbed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
From her haunts among the fen-lands,
Screamed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!”

Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the Kingdom of Ponemah,
To the Land of the Hereafter!

VOCABULARY

Adjidau’mo, the red squirrel
Ahdeek’, the reindeer
Ahmeek’, the beaver
Annemee’kee, the thunder
Apuk’wa, a bulrush
Baim-wa’wa, the sound of the thunder
Bemah’gut, the grape-vine
Chemaun’, a birch canoe
Chetowaik’, the plover
Chibia’bos, a musician; friend of Hiawatha;
ruler of the Land of Spirits
Dahin’da, the bull frog
Dush-kwo-ne’-she or Kwo-ne’-she,
the dragon fly
Esa, shame upon you
Ewa-yea’, lullaby
Gitche Gu’mee, The Big-Sea-Water,
Lake Superior
Gitche Man’ito, the Great Spirit,
the Master of Life
Gushkewau’, the darkness
Hiawa’tha, the Prophet, the Teacher,
son of Mudjekeewis, the West-Wind and Wenonah,
daughter of Nokomis
Ia’goo, a great boaster and story-teller
Inin’ewug, men, or pawns in the Game of the Bowl
Ishkoodah’, fire, a comet
Jee’bi, a ghost, a spirit
Joss’akeed, a prophet
Kabibonok’ka, the North-Wind
Ka’go, do not
Kahgahgee’, the raven
Kaw, no
Kaween’, no indeed
Kayoshk’, the sea-gull
Kee’go, a fish
Keeway’din, the Northwest wind, the Home-wind
Kena’beek, a serpent
Keneu’, the great war-eagle
Keno’zha, the pickerel
Ko’ko-ko’ho, the owl
Kuntasoo’, the Game of Plumstones
Kwa’sind, the Strong Man
Kwo-ne’-she, or Dush-kwo-ne’-she, the dragon-fly
Mahnahbe’zee, the swan
Mahng, the loon
Mahnomo’nee, wild rice
Ma’ma, the woodpecker
Me’da, a medicine-man
Meenah’ga, the blueberry
Megissog’won, the great Pearl-Feather,
a magician, and the Manito of Wealth
Meshinau’wa, a pipe-bearer
Minjekah’wun, Hiawatha’s mittens
Minneha’ha, Laughing Water; wife of Hiawatha;
a water-fall in a stream running into the
Mississippi between Fort Snelling and the
Falls of St. Anthony
Minne-wa’wa, a pleasant sound, as of the wind
in the trees
Mishe-Mo’kwa, the Great Bear
Mishe-Nah’ma, the Great Sturgeon
Miskodeed’, the Spring-Beauty, the Claytonia Virginica
Monda’min, Indian corn
Moon of Bright Nights, April
Moon of Leaves, May
Moon of Strawberries, June
Moon of the Falling Leaves, September
Moon of Snow-shoes, November
Mudjekee’wis, the West-Wind; father of Hiawatha
Mudway-aush’ka, sound of waves on a shore
Mushkoda’sa, the grouse
Nah’ma, the sturgeon
Nah’ma-wusk, spearmint
Na’gow Wudj’oo, the Sand Dunes of Lake Superior
Nee-ba-naw’-baigs, water-spirits
Nenemoo’sha, sweetheart
Nepah’win, sleep
Noko’mis, a grandmother, mother of Wenonah
No’sa, my father
Nush’ka, look! look!
Odah’min, the strawberry
Okahha’wis, the fresh-water herring
Ome’mee, the pigeon
Ona’gon, a bowl
Opechee’, the robin
Osse’o, Son of the Evening Star
Owais’sa, the blue-bird
Oweenee’, wife of Osseo
Ozawa’beek, a round piece of brass or copper in the Game of the Bowl
Pah-puk-kee’na, the grasshopper
Pau’guk, death
Pau-Puk-Kee’wis, the handsome Yenadizze,
the son of Storm Fool
Pe’boan, Winter
Pem’ican, meat of the deer or buffalo dried and pounded
Pezhekee’, the bison
Pishnekuh’, the brant
Pone’mah, hereafter
Puggawau’gun, a war-club
Puk-Wudj’ies, little wild men of the woods; pygmies
Sah-sah-je’wun, rapids
Segwun’, Spring
Sha’da, the pelican
Shahbo’min, the gooseberry
Shah-shah, long ago
Shaugoda’ya, a coward
Shawgashee’, the craw-fish
Shawonda’see, the South-Wind
Shaw-shaw, the swallow
Shesh’ebwug, ducks; pieces in the Game
of the Bowl
Shin’gebis, the diver, or grebe
Showain’neme’shin, pity me
Shuh-shuh-gah’, the blue heron
Soan-ge-ta’ha, strong-hearted
Subbeka’she, the spider
Sugge’me, the mosquito
To’tem, family coat-of-arms
Ugh, yes
Ugudwash’, the sun-fish
Unktahee’, the God of Water
Wabas’so, the rabbit, the North
Wabe’no, a magician, a juggler
Wabe’no-wusk, yarrow
Wa’bun, the East-Wind
Wa’bun An’nung, the Star of the East, the Morning Star
Wahono’win, a cry of lamentation
Wah-wah-tay’see, the fire-fly
Waubewy’on, a white skin wrapper
Wa’wa, the wild goose
Waw-be-wa’wa, the white goose
Wawonais’sa, the whippoorwill
Way-muk-kwa’na, the caterpillar
Weno’nah, the eldest daughter; Hiawatha’s mother, daughter of Nokomis
Yenadiz’ze, an idler and gambler; an Indian dandy

The End