a song of supplication to the Great Spirit for a
"brave and good Muscogulgee hunter, about to be caught in the fangs of
the Kind Old Kings." The moment the thunder and the song were heard,
the rattles were still, the bright eyes sent forth no more light, and
the fiery tongues retreated within the closed and recumbent jaws. Of
all that body of hideous reptiles not one seemed to be imbued with
breath. Nearer and nearer came the song, and as it came the hunter
fancied that it was the music of a being moving level with the earth,
if not beneath its surface. He was right. Soon, in the grass at his
feet, appeared a little snake scarcely thicker than his little finger,
and not longer than the space between his hand and his shoulder. The
colours of this little reptile were as various and beautiful as those
of the eyes of the Kind Old Kings, but these were fixed and permanent,
those as I have said changeable and changing as a woman's mind. The
head was green, the sides were yellow, the belly white, down its back
ran two red stripes, and there were rings of bright crimson around its
tail. Elevating its head as it drew near, it remained stationary and
silent for a moment, and then addressed the Muscogulgee in these
words:--

"I am the spirit raised by the potent _medicine_ of the Cherokee priest;
and, invoked by thy call, I have hastened hither at thy cry of distress,
to tell thee thou art not _lost_. Though thou didst a foolish thing to
come to this valley of death, and he, at whose bidding the thing was
undertaken, a wicked one in sending thee, yet thou shalt not die this
time. I am the Maiden in Green, the ruling Spirit of both mountain and
valley, having power over even the Bright Old Inhabitants, and they
shall not harm thee. Thou art, if I remember right, commanded, as the
price of the beautiful daughter of the Cherokee _powwow_, to carry to
him a tooth from the jaw of a living King and a rattle from his tail,
and an eye from his skull; and to report of sundry things not
necessary to be named. Thou shalt have my aid to accomplish these
things."

So saying, the Maiden in Green re-commenced her song, the while making
a circuit around the prisoner at a small distance from him. When she
had finished the circuit, she changed her song to one which seemed a
song of reproach and threatening. Whatever was the subject, it had the
effect of rekindling the Bright Old Inhabitants to their former state
of wrath. Their eyes were relit w