Presently, beside me came creeping the lithe Mohican, and lay down prone, smooth and golden, and shining like a sleek panther in the sun.

“Is all well guarded, brother?” I whispered.

“Not even a wood-mouse could creep from the swamp unless our warriors see it.”

“And when dark comes?”

“Our ears must be our eyes, Loskiel....  But neither the Cat-People nor the Andastes will venture out of that morass, save only by the trail.  And we shall have two watchers on it through the night.”

“There is no other outlet?”

“None, except by the ridge Boyd travels.  He blocks that pass with his twenty men.”

“Then we should have their egress blocked, except only in the north?”

“Yes—­ unless they learn of this by magic,” muttered the Mohican.

It was utterly useless for me to decry or ridicule his superstitions; and there was but one way to combat them.

“If witchcraft there truly be in Catharines-town,” said I, “it is bad magic, and therefore weak; and can avail nothing against true priesthood.  What could the degraded acolytes of this Red Priest do against a consecrated Sagamore of the Lenape—­ against an ensign of the Enchanted Clan?  Else why do you wear your crest—­ or the great Ghost Bear there rearing upon your breast?”

“It is true,” he murmured uneasily.  “What spell can Amochol lay upon us?  What magic can he make to escape us?  For the trail from Catharines-town is stopped by a Siwanois Sagamore and a Mohican warrior!  It is closed by an Oneida Sachem who stand watching.  When the Ghost Bear and the Were-Wolf watch, then the whole forest watches with them—­ Loup, Blue Wolf, and Bear.  Where, then, can the Forest Cats slink out?  Where can the filthy Carcajou escape?”

“Mayaro has spoken.  It is a holy barrier that locks and bolts this door of secret evils.  Under Tharon shall this trap remain inviolate till the last sorcerer be taken in it, the last demon be dead!”

"Yo-ya-ne-re!” he said, deliberately employing the Canienga expression with a fierce scorn that, for a moment, made his noble features terrible.  Then he spat as though to wash from his mouth the taste of the hated language that had soiled it, even when used in contempt and derision; and he said in the suave tongue of his own people:  “Pray to your white God, Holder of Heaven, Master of Life and Death, that into our hands be delivered these scoffers who mock at Him and at Tharon—­ these Cat-murderers of little children, these pollutors of the Three Fires.  And in the morning I shall arise and look into the rising sun, and ask the same of the far god who made of me a Mohican, a Siwanois, and a Sagamore.  Let these things be done, brother, ere our hatchets redden in the flames of Catharines-town.  For,” he added, naively, “it is well that God should know what we are about, lest He misunderstand our purpose.”

[* “It is well!”]