new it!

He knew it as the first shadow of the visions which the prayer was
bringing:--it was the voice of the Ruler whose office he now held--the
aged man who had once worn the white robe and said--"If she had not
died--her children would be your children!"

The picture of Po-tzah's small brown babe came between him and the
sacred figure on the rock,--a strange thing for the voice to suggest!
A little child--in the dusk--and--sheltering arms around it!

"Oh You!
Oh--Indwelling God!
Come to me!
Grey ghost--white ghost
Why is the false enchantment?
Grey ghost of darkness--
White ghost of high hills
Make way for sacred magic,
Sink far your darkened spells!
O You!
O Indwelling God
Come to me!"

In the dusk a shadow--or it might have been a drooping bough of the
pinyon tree--gave outline of a bent head above the outline of the
babe--only a strange trick of carving on the gray stone, and swaying
branches outlining a head--then the shoulders--then an arm about the
babe! To the mind of the mystic it was the visible temptation of a
black enchantment in the very presence of the god!--The strongest the
opposing powers could send to man under vows of prayer and search for
the spirit medicine of the highest thought.

[Illustration: THE SIGNAL FIRE TO THE MOUNTAIN GOD _Page 129_]

"Oh You!
Goddess of the stars
You--who gives the life!
Why is there for me false magic?
Mother mine of the starry skirt
Why for me the darkened star?
I, Master of spells, call to you!
Ho:--there! It is I!
Green and black spirit of power
Seek elsewhere your victims!
I seek the light--I find the light!
Mother mine of the starry skirt
I find the light!
I--Master of spells!"

He was no longer merely a singer of prayers now. The dance before the
Ancient gods had begun as the first stars glimmered in the blue.

After many hours of the dance all the world drifts far. There is
nothing real left but the circle where the prayer is, and the space
where the feet touch in the dull p