mson under the increasing
furnace glow. Then, as we rounded a heavy jutting crag, a great light
flared up almost in our faces, not out of the kindling ravine, but
breaking forth among the huge pines on the cliffs.

"Their council-fire!" panted Mount. "See them sitting there!"

"Flatten out," I whispered. "Follow me!" And I crawled straight towards
the fire, where, ink-black against the ruddy conflagration, an enormous
pine lay uprooted, smashed by lightning or tempest, I know not which.

Into the dense shadows of the debris I crawled, Mount and Sir George
following, and lay there in the dark, staring at the forbidden circle
where the secret mysteries of the False-Faces had already begun.

Three great fires roared, set at regular intervals in a cleared space,
walled in by the huge black pines. At the foot of a tree sat a white
man, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. The man was
Walter Butler.

On his right sat Brant, wrapped in a crimson blanket, his face painted
black and scarlet. On his left knelt a ghastly figure wearing a scowling
wooden mask painted yellow and black.

Six separate groups of Indians surrounded the fires. They were sachems
of the Six Nations, each sachem bearing in his hands the symbol of his
nation and of his clan. All were wrapped in black-and-white blankets,
and their faces were painted white above the upper lip as though they
wore skin-tight masks.

Three young girls, naked save for the beaded clout, and painted scarlet
from brow to ankle, beat the witch-drums tump-a-tump! tump-a-tump! while
a fourth stood, erect as a vermilion statue, holding a chain belt woven
in black-and-white wampum.

Behind these central figures the firelight fell on a solid semicircle of
savages, crowns shaved, feathers aslant on the braided lock, and all
oiled and painted for war.

A chief, wrapped in a blue blanket, stepped out into the circle swinging
the carcass of a white dog by the hind-legs. He tied it to a black-birch
sapling and left it dangling and turning round and round.

"This for the Keepers of the Fires," he said, in Tuscarora, and flung
the dog's entrails into the middle fire.

Three young men sprang into the ring; each threw a log onto one of the
fires.

"The name of the Holder of the Heavens may now be spoken and heard
without offence," said an old sachem, rising. "Hark! brothers. Harken, O
you wise men and sachems! The False-Faces are laughing in the ravine
where the water is b