“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 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.  Catrine Montour closed her horrible little eyes, threw back her head, and, marking time with her flat foot, began to chant.