ccoutrements, the bright tips of feathers. Women shrieked as
Ciccio, in his war-paint, wheeled near the pavement. Children
screamed and ran. The colliers shouted. Ciccio smiled in his
terrifying war-paint, brandished his spear and trotted softly, like
a flower on its stem, round to the procession.

Miss Pinnegar and Alvina and James Houghton had come round into
Knarborough Road to watch. It was a great moment. Looking along the
road they saw all the shopkeepers at their doors, the pavements
eager. And then, in the distance, the white horse jingling its
trappings of scarlet hair and bells, with the dusky Kishwegin
sitting on the saddle-blanket of brilliant, lurid stripes, sitting
impassive and all dusky above that intermittent flashing of colour:
then the chieftain, dark-faced, erect, easy, swathed in a white
blanket, with scarlet and black stripes, and all his strange crest
of white, tip-dyed feathers swaying down his back: as he came nearer
one saw the wolfskin and the brilliant moccasins against the black
sides of his horse; Louis and Goeffrey followed, lurid, horrid in
the face, wearing blankets with stroke after stroke of blazing
colour upon their duskiness, and sitting stern, holding their
spears: lastly, Ciccio, on his bay horse with a green seat,
flickering hither and thither in the rear, his feathers swaying, his
horse sweating, his face ghastlily smiling in its war-paint. So they
advanced down the grey pallor of Knarborough Road, in the late
wintry afternoon. Somewhere the sun was setting, and far overhead
was a flush of orange.

"Well I never!" murmured Miss Pinnegar. "Well I never!"

The strange savageness of the striped Navajo blankets seemed to her
unsettling, advancing down Knarborough Road: she examined Kishwegin
curiously.

"Can you _believe_ that that's Mr. May--he's exactly like a girl.
Well, well--it makes you wonder what is and what isn't. But _aren't_
they good? What? Most striking. Exactly like Indians. You can't
believe your eyes. My word what a terrifying race they--" Here she
uttered a scream and ran back clutching the wall as Ciccio swept
past, brushing her with his horse's tail, and actually swinging his
spear so as to touch Alvina and James Houghton lightly with the butt
of it. James too started with a cry, the mob at the corner screamed.
But Alvina caught the slow, mischievous smile as the painted horror
showed his teeth in passing; she was able to flash back an excited
laugh. She felt