eing painted with firelight. I acquaint you that the
False-Faces are coming up out of the ravine!"

The witch-drums boomed and rattled in the silence that followed his
words. Far off I heard the sound of many voices laughing and talking all
together; nearer, nearer, until, torch in hand, a hideously masked
figure bounded into the circle, shaking out his bristling cloak of green
reeds. Another followed, another, then three, then six, then a dozen,
whirling their blazing torches; all horribly masked and smothered in
coarse bunches of long, black hair, or cloaked with rustling
river reeds.

"Ha! Ah-weh-hot-kwah!
Ha! Ah-weh-hah!
Ha! The crimson flower!
Ha! The flower!"

they chanted, thronging around the central fire; then falling back in a
half-circle, torches lifted, while the masked figures banked solidly
behind, chanted monotonously:

"Red fire burns on the maple!
Red fire burns in the pines.
The red flower to the maple!
The red death to the pines!"

At this two young girls, wearing white feathers and white weasel pelts
dangling from shoulders to knees, entered the ring from opposite ends.
Their arms were full of those spectral blossoms called "Ghost-corn," and
they strewed the flowers around the ring in silence. Then three maidens,
glistening in cloaks of green pine-needles, slipped into the fire
circle, throwing showers of violets and yellow moccasin flowers over the
earth, calling out, amid laughter, "Moccasins for whippoorwills! Violets
for the two heads entangled!" And, their arms empty of blossoms, they
danced away, laughing while the False-Faces clattered their wooden masks
and swung their torches till the flames whistled.

Then six sachems rose, casting off their black-and-white blankets, and
each in turn planted branches of yellow willow, green willow, red osier,
samphire, witch-hazel, spice-bush, and silver birch along the edge of
the silent throng of savages.

"Until the night-sun comes be these your barriers, O Iroquois!" they
chanted. And all answered:

"The Cherry-maid shall lock the gates to the People of the Morning! A-e!
ja-e! Wild cherry and cherry that is red!"

Then came the Cherry-maid, a slender creature, hung from head to foot
with thick bunches of wild cherries which danced and swung when she
walked; and the False-Faces plucked the fruit from her as she passed
around, laughing and tossing her black hair, until she had been
despoiled and only