eat room veiled the opposite side, there being no chimney or window,
and he sat in the interior behind the fire.

He gazed furtively over his shoulder ever and anon, as the flames flared
up, revealing the deeply red walls of the dome-like place with here and
there a buffalo skin suspended against them, the inside of the hide
showing, painted in curious hieroglyphics, brilliant with color, and
instinct with an untranslated meaning; a number of conch shells lay
about, with jars and vases of clay, and those quaintly fashioned earthen
drums, the heads of tightly stretched deerskin,--all paraphernalia of
the savage worship which the cheera-taghe had conducted, now abandoned
as bewitched.

Sitting here comfortably in the place of those men of the "divine fire,"
Cuthbert Barnett, his rifle by his side, his knife in his belt, his
coonskin cap pushed back from his face, once more florid, warm, tingling
from the keen wind of the day and the change to this heated air, and
with perchance a drowsy eyelid, began to marvel anew as to the fate of
the cheera-taghe. Hardly a drowsy eyelid, he consciously had, however,
for he had resolved that he would not sleep. His situation here alone
was too dangerous; he feared wolves,--the fire that would otherwise
affright them might untended sink too low. He feared also some wandering
Indian. Should he be discovered here by means of the unaccustomed light
he might be wantonly murdered as he slept, or in revenge for the
sacrilege of his intrusion among these things that the savages had
esteemed sacred.

Therefore, when he suddenly saw the cheera-taghe he saw them quite
plainly. Tall, stately, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric garb,
draped with their iridescent feather-wrought mantles, their heads
dressed with white plumes, a staff of cane adorned with white feathers
in the right hand, a green bough in the left, preceded by those
curiously sonorous earthen drums, of which the drone blended with the
notes of the religious song, _Yo-he-wah-yah! Yo-he-wah-yah!_ they thrice
led the glittering procession of the "holy dance" around and around the
"beloved square."

A blank interval ensued. And then again he saw them, nearer now, more
distinct; they were entering the temple; they were close at hand;
triumphant of mien, assured, so full of life!--he could laugh to think
that he had had a dream, or had heard somehow, that they were dead or
lost or vaguely gone. For here, without seeming in the least t