The Sagamore’s face had become a smooth, blank mask again.

“What has this maid, Lois, to do with Catharines-town?” I asked.  “Devils live there in darkness.”

“She did not say.”

“You do not know?”

“No, Loskiel.”

“But,” said I, troubled, “why did she journey hither?”

“Because she now believes that only I in all the world could guide her to the vale Yndaia; and that one day I will pity her and take her there.”

“Doubtless,” I said anxiously, “she has heard at the forts or hereabouts that we are to march on Catharines-town.”

“She knows it now, Loskiel”

“And means to follow?” I exclaimed in horror.

“My brother speaks the truth.”

“God!  What urges the child thither?”

“I do not know, Loskiel.  It seems as though a madness were upon her that she must go to Catharines-town.  I tell you there is sorcery in all this.  I say it—­ I, a Sagamore of the Enchanted Wolf.  Who should know magic when it stirs but I, of the Siwanois—­ the Magic Clan?  Say what you will, my comrade and blood-brother, there is sorcery abroad; and well I know who wrought it, spinning with spiders’ webs there by the lost Lake of Kendaia——­” He shuddered slightly.  “There by the black waters of the lake—­ that hag—­ and all her spawn!”

“Catharine Montour!”

“The Toad-woman herself—­ and all her spawn.”

“The Senecas?”

“And the others,” he said in a low voice.

A sudden and terrible misgiving assailed me.  I swallowed, and then said slowly: 

“Two scalps were taken late last night by Murphy and Elerson.  And the scalps were not of the Mohawk.  Not Oneida, nor Onondaga, nor Cayuga.  Mayaro!” I gasped.  “So help me God, those scalps are never Seneca!”

“Erie!” he exclaimed with a mixture of rage and horror.  And I saw his sinewy hand quivering on his knife-hilt.  “Listen, Loskiel!  I knew it!  No one has told me.  I have sat here all the day alone, making my steel bright and my paint fresher, and singing to myself my people’s songs.  And ever as I sat at the lodge door, something in the summer wind mocked at me and whispered to me of demons.  And when I rose and stood at gaze, troubled, and minding every river-breeze, faintly I seemed to scent the taint of evil.  If those two scalps be Erie, then where the Cat-People creep their Sorcerer will be found.”

“Amochol,” I repeated under my breath.  And shivered.

For, deep in the secret shadows of that dreadful place where this vile hag, Catharine Montour, ruled it in Catharines-town, dwelt also all that now remained of the Cat-Nation—­ Eries—­ People of the Cat—­ a dozen, it was rumoured, scarcely more—­ and demons all, serving that horrid warlock, Amochol, the Sorcerer of the Senecas.

What dreadful rites this red priest and his Eries practiced there, none knew, unless it were true that the False Faces knew.  But rumour whispered with a thousand tongues of horrors viewless, nameless, inconceivable; and that far to the westward Biskoonah yawned, so close indeed to the world’s surface that the waters boiling deep in hell burst into burning fountains in the magic garden where the red priest made his sorcery, alone.