Drawing her into its bowers, it gently transformed her into one of
its blossoms, leaving her conscious soul folded up in the transparent
petals.

Here hung Yillah in a trance, the world without all tinged with the
rosy hue of her prison. At length when her spirit was about to burst
forth in the opening flower, the blossom was snapped from its stem;
and borne by a soft wind to the sea; where it fell into the opening
valve of a shell; which in good time was cast upon the beach of the
Island of Amma.

In a dream, these events were revealed to Aleema the priest; who by a
spell unlocking its pearly casket, took forth the bud, which now
showed signs of opening in the reviving air, and bore faint shadowy
revealings, as of the dawn behind crimson clouds. Suddenly expanding,
the blossom exhaled away in perfumes; floating a rosy mist in the
air. Condensing at last, there emerged from this mist the same
radiant young Yillah as before; her locks all moist, and a rose-
colored pearl on her bosom. Enshrined as a goddess, the wonderful
child now tarried in the sacred temple of Apo, buried in a dell;
never beheld of mortal eyes save Aleema's.

Moon after moon passed away, and at last, only four days gone by,
Aleema came to her with a dream; that the spirits in Oroolia had
recalled her home by the way of Tedaidee, on whose coast gurgled up
in the sea an enchanted spring; which streaming over upon the brine,
flowed on between blue watery banks; and, plunging into a vortex,
went round and round, descending into depths unknown. Into this
whirlpool Yillah was to descend in a canoe, at last to well up in an
inland fountain of Oroolia.

CHAPTER XLIV
Away

Though clothed in language of my own, the maiden's story is in
substance the same as she related. Yet were not these things narrated
as past events; she merely recounted them as impressions of her
childhood, and of her destiny yet unaccomplished. And mystical as the
tale most assuredly was, my knowledge of the strange arts of the
island priesthood, and the rapt fancies indulged in by many of their
victims, deprived it in good part of the effect it otherwise would
have produced.

For ulterior purposes connected with their sacerdotal supremacy, the
priests of these climes oftentimes secrete mere infants in their
temples; and jealously secluding them from all intercourse with the
world, craftily delude them, as they grow up, into the wildest conceits.

Thus wrought upon, their