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“‘We go to find our father,’ they said.

“‘Oh! useless quest,’ wailed the mother.

“‘Oh! useless quest,’ echoed the tribes-people.

“But the great Medicine Man said, ‘The heart of a child has invisible eyes, perhaps the child-eyes see him. The heart of a child has invisible ears, perhaps the child-ears hear him call. Let them go.’ So the little children went forth into the forest; their young feet flew as though shod with wings, their young hearts pointed to the north as does the white man’s compass. Day after day they journeyed up-stream, until rounding a sudden bend they beheld a bark lodge with a thin blue curl of smoke drifting from its roof.

“‘It is our father’s lodge,’ they told each other, for their childish hearts were unerring in response to the call of kinship. Hand-in-hand they approached, and entering the lodge, said the one word, ‘Come.’

“The great Squamish chief outstretched his arms towards them, then towards the laughing river, then towards the mountains.

“‘Welcome, my sons!’ he said. ‘And good-bye, my mountains, my brothers, my crags and my canyons!’ And with a child clinging to each hand he faced once more the country of the tidewater.”

* * * * *

The legend was ended.

For a long time he sat in silence. He had removed his gaze from the bend in the river, around which the two children had come and where the eyes of the recluse had first rested on them after ten years of solitude.

The chief spoke again, “It was here, on this spot we are sitting, that he built his lodge: here he dwelt those ten years alone, alone.”

I nodded silently. The legend was too beautiful to mar with comments, and as the twilight fell, we threaded our way through the underbrush, past the disused logger’s camp and into the trail that leads citywards.