She sat considering, then, in a low, firm voice: 

“To tell you why, is why I asked you here....  And first I must show you what my packet held....  Shall I show you, Euan?”

“Surely, little comrade.”

She drew the packet from her bosom, unlaced the thong, unrolled the deer-hide covering.

“Here is a roll of bark,” she said.  “This I have never had interpreted.  Can you read it for me, Euan?”

And there in the lantern light I read it, while she looked down over my shoulder.

  “KADON!

“Aesa-yat-yen-enghdon, Lois!  “Etho! [And here was painted a white dog lying dead, its tongue hanging out sideways.] “Hen-skerigh-watonte.  “Jatthon-ten-yonk, Lois!  “Jin-isaya-dawen-ken-wed-e-wayen. [Here was drawn in outline the foot and claws of a forest lynx.] “Niyi-eskah-haghs, na-yegh-nyasa-kenra-dake, niya-wennonh!” [Then a white symbol.]

For a long time I gazed at the writing in shocked silence.  Then I asked her if she suspected what was written there in the Canienga dialect.

“I never have had it read.  Indians refuse, shake their heads, and look askance at me, and tell me nothing; interpreters laugh at me, saying there is no meaning in the lines.  Is there, Euan?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You can interpret?”

“Yes.”

“Will you?”

I was silent, pondering the fearful meaning which had been rendered plainer and more hideous by the painted symbols.

“It has to do with the magic of the Seneca priesthood,” I muttered.  “Here is a foul screed—­ and yet a message, too, to you.”

Then, with an effort I found courage to read, as it was written: 

“I speak!  Thou, Lois, mightest have been destroyed!  Thus! (Here the white dog.) But I will frustrate their purpose.  Keep listening to me, Lois.  That which has befallen you we place it here (or, ’we draw it here’—­ i. e., the severed foot and claws of a lynx).  Being born white (literally, ’being born having a white neck’), this happened.”  And the ghastly sign of Leshi ended it.

“But what does it all signify?” she asked, bewildered.

And even as she spoke, out of the dull and menacing horror of the symbols, into my mind, leaped terrible comprehension.

I said coolly:  “It must have been Amochol—­ and his Erie sorcerers!  How came you in Catharines-town?”

“I?  In Catharines-town!” she faltered.  “Was I, then, ever there?”

I pointed at the drawing of the dead white dog.

“Somebody saved you from that hellish sacrifice.  I tell you it is plain enough to read.  The rite is practiced only by the red sorcerers of the Senecas....  Look!  It was because your ‘neck’ was ‘white’!  Look again!  Here is the symbol of the Cat-People—­ the Eries—­ the acolytes of Amochol—­ here!  This spread lynx-pad with every separate claw extended!  Yet, it is drawn severed—­ in symbol of your escape.  Lois!  Lois!  It is plain enough.  I follow it all—­ almost all—­ nearly—­ but not quite——­”