Gretchen's chief literary pleasure had been the study of the German
poets. She had a poetic mind, and had learned to produce good rhymes. The
songs of Uhland, Heine, and Schiller delighted her. She had loved to read
the strange stories of Hoffman, and the imaginative works of Baron Fouqué.
She used to aspire to be an author or poet, but these aspirations had
received no countenance from Mrs. Woods, and yet the latter seemed rather
proud to regard her ward as possessing a superior order of mind.

"If there is anything that I do despise," Mrs. Woods used to say, "it is
books spun out of the air, all about nothin'! Dreams were made for sleep,
and the day was made for work. I haven't much to be proud of in this
world. I've always been a terror to lazy people and to Injuns, and if any
one were to write my life they'd have some pretty stirring stories to
tell. I have no doubt that I was made for something."

Although Mrs. Woods boasted that she was a terror to Indians, she had been
very apprehensive of danger since the Whitman colony massacre. She talked
bravely and acted bravely according to her view of moral courage, but with
a fearful heart. She dreaded the approaching Potlatch, and the frenzy that
calls for dark deeds if the dance of the evil spirits should conclude the
approaching feast.

There was a sullen look in Benjamin's face as he silently took his seat in
the log school-house the next morning. Mr. Mann saw it, and instinctively
felt the dark and mysterious atmosphere of it. He went to him immediately
after the opening exercises, and said:

"You haven't spoken to me this morning; what troubles you?"