“I see no further than you dream, O Amochol!”

He stretched out his arm toward her, menacingly: 

“Yet they shall both be strangled here upon this stone!” he said.  “Look, Witch!  Can you not see them lying there together?  I have dreamed it.”

She silently pointed at the two dead dogs.

“Look again!” he cried in a loud voice.  “What do you see?”

She made no reply.

“Answer!” he said sharply.

“I have looked.  And I see only the eternal wampum lying at my feet—­ lacking a single belt.”

With a furious gesture the Red Priest turned and stared at the dancing girls who raised their bare arms, crying: 

“We have dreamed, O Amochol!  Let your Sorceress explain our dreams to us!”

And one after another, as their turns came, they leaped up from the ground and sprang forward.  The first, a tawny, slender, mocking thing, flung wide her arms.

“Look, Sorceress!  I dreamed of a felled sapling and a wolverine!  What means my dream?”

And the slim, white figure, head bowed in her dark hair, answered quietly: 

“O dancer of the Na-usin, who wears okwencha at the Onon-hou-aroria, yet is no Seneca, the felled sapling is thou thyself.  Heed lest the wolverine shall scent a human touch upon thy breast!” And she pointed at the Andastes.

A dead silence followed, then the girl, horror struck, shrank back, her hands covering her face.

Another sprang forward and cried: 

“Sorceress!  I dreamed of falling water and a red cloud at sunset hanging like a plume!”

“Water falls, daughter of Mountain Snakes.  Every drop you saw was a dead man falling.  And the red cloud was red by reason of blood; and the plume was the crest of a war chief.”

“What chief!” said Amochol, turning his deadly eyes on her.

“A Gate-Keeper of the West.”

The shuddering silence was broken by the eager voice of another girl, bounding from her place—­ a flash of azure and jewelled paint.

“And I, O Sorceress!  I dreamed of night, and a love song under the million stars.  And of a great stag standing in the water.”

“Had the stag no antlers, little daughter?”

“None, for it was spring time.”

“You dreamed of night.  It shall be night for a long while—­ for ages and ages, ere the stag’s wide antlers crown his head again.  For the antlers were lying upon a new made grave.  And the million stars were the lights of camp-fires.  And the love-song was the Karenna.  And the water you beheld was the river culled Chemung.”

The girl seemed stunned, standing there plucking at her fingers, scarlet lips parted, and her startled eyes fixed upon the white-draped sibyl.

“Executioner!  Bend your bow!” cried Amochol, with a terrible stare at the Sorceress.

The man in woven armour raised his bow, bent it, drawing the arrow to the tip.  At the same instant the Prophetess rose to her feet, flung back her cowl, and looked Amochol steadily in the eyes from the shadow of her hair.