things
it would reveal. To have been dazzled into blindness had been far more
tolerable than to endure that terrible scrutiny. So felt the guilty
young human thing as, with increasing awe and dread, he perceived that,
while the eye was never turned from him, it seemed to be watchfully
observant of all that was passing beneath it, however distant the
objects, diverse, multitudinous. No secret, then; no guilty deed or
thought, could be hidden in that light. The boy started! That lie he had
sent back to his mother as he was slinking away from home! Did the eye
see that? Aye, and the hundred others he had told, and was showing upon
his soul a smutch, a smear, a spot for every one! Back, again, he shrank
and hid himself behind the column. The column was far loftier and more
massive than those which uphold the dome of mighty St. Peter's, and was
hewn out from the eternal granite; yet the light of that terrible eye
came gleaming through it, as if it had been of the clearest crystal. He
ran to another, then to a third, fourth, fifth--tenth. In vain!
Interpose what he might, still was it all as airy transparency between
himself and that piercing glance. There are X-rays for the soul, as well
as for the body. He turned his back upon it; there it was still! Look
where he would--in the depths above--and the eye was ever before him,
its calm and terrible look unchanged. Yet it did not seem to follow him.
It was simply _there_! Everywhere!

The self-convicted young offender was still dodging and flitting about
among the columns, when the voice of the Manitou king--the first sound
he had heard since the procession had vanished--came to his ears, with
the somewhat startling words:

"Manitou-Echo and Will-o'-the-Wisp, come, conjure up, now, the red
moccasins' dream! By this time our light has purged the young dreamer's
eyes sufficiently clear of the red mist for him to see what stuff his
dream is made of, and to what it is tending."

Whereupon a bareheaded elf, extremely fantastic in appearance, yet
beautiful, too, and recognized at once by his voice, Manitou-Echo came
flitting up to Sprigg, and, with a bland smile and light wave of the
hand, thus addressed him:

"Sprigg, how are you this morning? Fresh and spry? Glad to hear it. Our
brave Sprigg ran a fine race yesterday--splendid! Everybody said so! You
shall run another to-day, if you much desire it. You have just been
playing at hide and seek, I see. A nice little game all to y