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 moment the cat rose, took three stealthy steps, and lay down at her feet, closing its emerald eyes.

The girl raised her head:  “Ask me concerning the truth, you sachems of the Oneida, and speak for the five war-chiefs who stand in their paint behind you!”

An old sachem rose, peering out at her from dim, aged eyes.

“Is it war, O Woman of the Rose?” he quavered.

“Neah!” she said, sweetly.

An intense silence followed, shattered by a scream from the hag, Catrine.

“A lie!  It is war!  You have struck the post, Cayugas!  Senecas!  Mohawks!  It is a lie!  Let this young sorceress speak to the Oneidas; they are hers; the Tuscaroras are hers, and the Onondagas and the Lenape!  Let them heed her and her dreams and her witchcraft!  It concerns not you, O Mountain-snakes!  It concerns only these and False-Faces!  She is their prophetess; let her dream for them.  I have dreamed for you, O Elder Brothers!  And I have dreamed of war!!”

“And I of peace!” came the clear, floating voice, soothing the harsh echoes of the hag’s shrieking appeal.  “Take heed, you Mohawks, and you Cayuga war-chiefs and sachems, that you do no violence to this council-fire!”