ed, sweetly: "Come, O Little Rosebud
Woman!--Ke-neance-e-qua! O-gin-e-o-qua!--Woman of the Rose!"

And all together the False-Faces cried: "Welcome to Ta-lu-la, the
leaping waters! Here is I-e-nia, the wanderer's rest! Welcome, O Woman
of the Rose!"

Then the grotesque throng of the False-Faces parted right and left; a
lynx, its green eyes glowing, paced out into the firelight; and behind
the tawny tree-cat came slowly a single figure--a young girl, bare of
breast and arm; belted at the hips with silver, from which hung a
straight breadth of doeskin to the instep of her bare feet. Her dark
hair, parted, fell in two heavy braids to her knees; her lips were
tinted with scarlet; her small ear-lobes and finger-tips were stained a
faint rose-color.

In the breathless silence she raised her head. Sir George's crushing
grip clutched my arm, and he fell a-shuddering like a man with ague.

The figure before us was Magdalen Brant.

The lynx lay down at her feet and looked her steadily in the face.

Slowly she raised her rounded arm, opened her empty palm; then from
space she seemed to pluck a rose, and I saw it there between her
forefinger and her thumb.

A startled murmur broke from the throng. "Magic! She plucks blossoms
from the empty air!"

"O you Oneidas," came the sweet, serene voice, "at the tryst of the
False-Faces I have kept my tryst.

"You wise men of the Six Nations, listen now attentively; and you,
ensigns and attestants, attend, honoring the truth which from my twin
lips shall flow, sweetly as new honey and as sap from April maples."

She stooped and picked from the ground a withered leaf, holding it out
in her small, pink palm.

"Like this withered leaf is your understanding. It is for a maid to
quicken you to life, ... as I restore this last year's leaf to life,"
she said, deliberately.

In her open palm the dry, gray leaf quivered, moved, straightened,
slowly turned moist and fresh and green. Through the intense silence the
heavy, gasping breath of hundreds of savages told of the tension they
struggled under.

She dropped the leaf to her feet; gradually it lost its green and curled
up again, a brittle, ashy flake.

"O you Oneidas!" she cried, in that clear voice which seemed to leave a
floating melody in the air, "I have talked with my Sisters of the
Murmuring Skies, and none but the lynx at my feet heard us."

She bent her lovely head and looked into the creature's blazing orbs;
after a momen