the garment of sewed leaves hung from shoulder
to ankle.

A green blanket was spread for her and she sat down under the branch of
witch-hazel.

"The barrier is closed!" she said. "Kindle your coals from Onondaga, O
you Keepers of the Central Fire!"

An aged sachem arose, and, lifting his withered arm, swept it eastward.

"The hearth is cleansed," he said, feebly. "Brothers, attend!
She-who-runs is coming. Listen!"

A dead silence fell over the throng, broken only by the rustle of the
flames. After a moment, very far away in the forest, something sounded
like the muffled gallop of an animal, paddy-pad! paddy-pad, coming
nearer and ever nearer.

"It's the Toad-woman!" gasped Mount in my ear. "It's the Huron witch!
Ah! My God! look there!"

Hopping, squattering, half scrambling, half bounding into the firelight
came running a dumpy creature all fluttering with scarlet rags. A coarse
mat of gray hair masked her visage; she pushed it aside and raised a
dreadful face in the red fire-glow--a face so marred, so horrible, that
I felt Mount shivering in the darkness beside me.

Through the hollow boom-boom of the witch-drums I heard a murmur
swelling from the motionless crowd, like a rising wind in the pines. The
hag heard it too; her mouth widened, splitting her ghastly visage. A
single yellow fang caught the firelight.

"O you People of the Mountain! O you Onondagas!" she cried. "I am come
to ask my Cayugas and my Senecas why they assemble here on the Kennyetto
when their council-fire and yours should burn at Onondaga! O you
Oneidas, People of the Standing Stone! I am come to ask my Senecas, my
Mountain-snakes, why the Keepers of the Iroquois Fire have let it go
out? O you of the three clans, let your ensigns rise and listen. I speak
to the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Bear! And I call on the seven kindred
clans of the Wolf, and the two kindred clans of the Turtle, and the four
kindred clans of the Bear throughout the Six Nations of the Iroquois
confederacy, throughout the clans of the Lenni-Lenape, throughout the
Huron-Algonquins and their clans!

"And I call on the False-Faces of the Spirit-water and the Water of
Light!"

She shook her scarlet rags and, raising her arm, hurled a hatchet into
a painted post which stood behind the central fire.

"O you Cayugas, People of the Carrying-place! Strike that war-post with
your hatchets or face the ghosts of your fathers in every trail!"

There was a deathly silence. Cat