LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER

sought for many tens of summers,” he replied sorrowfully.

“Was it ever there?” I questioned.

“Yes, it was there,” he said. “My grand- sires and my great-grandsires saw it; but that was long ago. My father never saw it, though he spent many days in many years searching, always searching, for it. I am an old man myself, and I have never seen it, though from my youth I, too, have searched. Sometimes in the stillness of the nights I have paddled up in my canoe.” Then, lowering his voice: “Twice I have seen its shadow: high rocky shores, reaching as high as the tree tops on the mainland, then tall pines and firs on its summit like a king’s crown. As I paddled up the Arm one summer night, long ago, the shadow of these rocks and firs fell across my canoe, across my face, and across the waters beyond. I turned rapidly to look. There was no island there, nothing but a wide stretch of waters on both sides of me, and the moon almost directly overhead. Don’t say it was the shore that shadowed me,” he hastened, catching my thought. “The moon was above me; my canoe scarce made a shadow on the still waters. No, it was not the shore.”

“Why do you search for it?” I lamented, thinking of the old dreams in my own life whose realization I have never attained.

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