lodge, but
when you reach the spot no sign of the path shows."

"How is that?" asked the wondering Victor.

"It is the belief that the spirit of Mita, the daughter, is always
hovering over the spot, and that her heart forever grieves for her
father and lover. When she sees anyone drawing near the place, she
hurries from her home, which is near at hand, though no one knows
exactly where, and, bending over the ground, hurries along and flirts a
piece of her garment over the whole length of the path and blots it
out, so that grass grows where a few minutes before was only the hard
earth, packed by the moccasins of her father."

"What brings the path into sight again?" asked George Shelton.

"When night comes, Chief Wahla begins tramping around the circle once
more. At sunrise the path is as it was before, and so remains unless
some one starts forward to gain a closer look. The moment he does so
the invisible spirit of Mita, daughter of Wahla, hurries out and
destroys all the footprints, so that no one has ever been near enough
to gain a close view of them, nor can he ever do so. Such is the legend
of the Spirit Circle."[1]

[1] On the gently sloping side of a low mountain near the
Colorado-Wyoming line can be plainly seen a circular path of
about two hundred feet in diameter. The road connecting the
Rambler copper mines with Laramie passes within ten miles of the
place. When the curious observer climbs to the spot, whose path
shows distinctly from a distance, he cannot detect a sign of the
mystic circle. Various theories have been offered in explanation
of this phenomenon, but as yet none has proved satisfactory.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FIELD OF HONOR.

Deerfoot did not interrupt the Blackfoot while he was relating the
legend of the Spirit Circle. He listened attentively. He had heard many
such myths among his own people, and once they impressed him, but he
had come to look upon them as idle tales not worth a thought. Instead
of commenting upon the rude beauty of the story that had been told to
his friend many years before, he asked the practical question:

"What has the Spirit Circle to do with Deerfoot and Taggarak?"

"It is the law among the Blackfeet that when our war chief Taggarak
wills to punish some great criminal he sends him to the Spirit Circle,
where he must walk around it without food or drink till he drops down
and dies."

"Has anyone ever done