shields of the woven grass,
Their leader the mighty Kaktugwaas.

The Winag'mesuk, the forest folk,
They fled from the words that the white man spoke.
They were so tired, they were so small,
They hardly could find their way back at all,
Yet bravely they rallied with shield and lance
To dance for Klooskap their Snowshoe Dance!

Light and swift as the whirling snow
They leaped and fluttered aloft, alow.
Silent as owls in the white moonlight
They pounced and grappled in mimic fight.
When they chanted to Klooskap their last farewell
He laid on the forest a fairy spell.

From Little Thunder, from Kaktugwaas,
He took the buckler of woven grass,
The lance of reed with a point of bone,
The rounded footgear like his own,
And bade them grow there under the pines
While the snowdrifts melt and the sunlight shines!

The sagamore pines are dark and tall
That guard the Norumbega wall.
When the clear brooks dance to the flute of spring,
And veery and catbird of Klooskap sing,
The Winag'mesuk for one short hour
Come back for their token of Klooskap's power--
Moccasin Flower!

XII

GIFTS FROM NORUMBEGA

"What shall I bring thee then, from the world's end, Reine Margot?"
asked Alain Maclou. The small girl in the deep fireside recess of a
Picardy castle-hall considered it gravely.

"There should be three gifts," she said at last, "for so it always is in
Mere Bastienne's stories. I will have the shoes of silence, the girdle
of fortune, and diamonds from Norumbega. Tell me again about Norumbega."

"Nay, little one, I must go, to see after the lading of the ship. Fare
thee well for this time," and the young man bent his tall head above the
hand of his seven-year-old lady. The graceful, quick-witted and
imaginative child had been his pet and he her loyal servant these three
years. It was understood between them that she was really the Queen of
France, barred from her throne by the Salic Law that forbade any woman
to rule that country in her own right. Some day he was to discover for
her a kingdom beyond seas, in which she alone should reign. Of all the
tales, marvelous, fanciful or tragic, which he or her old nurse had told
her, she liked best the legend of Norumbega, the city in the wilderness
which no explorer had ever found. Wherever French, Breton or English
fishermen had become at all familiar with the Indians