d up and unbound her hair,
letting it down over her face. I understood, and, stepping to the fire,
returned with a charred ember. She held out first one hand, then the
other, and I marked the palms with the ashes, touched her forehead, her
breast, her feet. Thus, in the solemn presence of death itself, she
claimed at the tribunal of the Most High the justice denied on earth,
signing herself a widow with the ashes none but a wedded wife may dare
to wear.

Lower and lower burned the tiny torch, sank to a spark, and went out.
The black curtains of obscurity closed in; redder and redder spread the
glare from the camp-fire; crackling and roaring, the flames rose,
tufted with smoke, through which a million sparks whirled upward,
showering the void above. Dark shapes moved in the glow with a sparkle
of spur and sword as they turned; the infernal light fell on the naked
bodies of Oneidas, sitting like demons, eyes blinking at the flames.
And through the roar of the fire I heard their chanting undertone,
monotonous, interminable, saluting their dead:

"_Cover the White Throat at Carenay,
Lest evil fall at Danascara,
Lay the phantom away,
Men of Thendara,
Trails of Kayaderos
And Adriutha
Cover our loss!
Tree of Oswaya,
From Garoga
To Caroga
Cover the White Throat
For the sake of the Silver Boat afloat
In the Water of Light, O Tharon!
This for the pledge of Aroronon
Lest the Long House end
And the Tree bend
And our dead ascend in every trail
And the Great League fail.
Now by the brotherhood ye've sworn
Let the Oneida mourn._"

And I heard from the forest the deadened blows of mattock and spade,
and saw the glimmer of burial torches; and, through the steady chanting
of the Oneida, the solemn voice of the chaplain in prayer for dead and
living:

"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. And establish Thou the
work of our hands upon us--yea, the work of our hands, establish Thou
it!"

* * * * *

It lacked an hour to dawn when the harsh, stringy drums rolled from the
forest and the smoky camp awoke; and I, keeping my vigil, there in the
shadow where she lay, listening and bending above her, was aware of a
bandaged hand touching me--a feverish arm about my neck, drawing my
head lower, closer, till, in the darkness, my face lay on hers, and our
tremulous lips united.

"Is all well, my belove