anitou mercy done,
Great Wahcondah wills it!"

CHAPTER XV.

The Manitou Eye.

The song had hardly begun when Sprigg could hear a huge stir in the
cave, as if the call had awakened a multitude of living things from the
slumber of the night. The hubbub was neither boisterous nor loud, yet it
seemed to come, not only from near at hand, but from far and wide. It
was an infinite mingling of confused, indistinct sounds, like the
inarticulate murmurs rising from innumerable voices--talking, singing
and shouting, intermixed with laughter and with the cries of beasts and
birds.

On hearing the commotion around him, the boy had risen to his feet, and
now, with strained eyes, was vainly striving to pierce the red mist in
which he was enveloped. Before the song was ended, the multitude, from
whom the hubbub rose, were evidently in rapid motion, and all in the
same direction, sweeping past him so that he felt as if he were standing
upon a rock, in the midst of a wide and swiftly flowing river, on whose
waters rested an impenetrable fog. Closely intermingled with the
voice-like sounds were now to be distinguished a variety of other
noises, resembling the sharp, light clattering of cloven hoofs, the
muffled pattering of hairy paws, or the wind-like whirring of fluttering
wings.

As the song closed, Sprigg felt something placed in his hand, which,
becoming visible the moment it came in contact with him, proved to be a
coronal of bright green plumes, such as we have seen described in the
interview between Jervis Whitney and Nick of the Woods. It was then
remarked that his headpiece possessed the magic property of rendering
the person who wore it--fairy or human--invisible to mortal eyes. Nor
was this all; It had also the power of making the sights and sounds of
Fairyland as clearly perceptible to the senses of the mortal who should
chance to get it as to the fairies themselves, whether the wee folks
were willing or not, he should pry into their mysteries.

This fantastic ornament, the only object visible to him in the red
mist--his own hand that held it up to his admiring gaze not
excepted--Sprigg thought even more beautiful and desirable than ever
were the red moccasins. He was wishing it was his, and debating within
himself whether he should venture to put it upon his head, when a voice,
which he recognized to be the same he had heard at home and in the woods
and on the hill, and now knew to be that of Manitou-Ech