CHAPTER XVIII.A DIVERSION.

Never did moon so ebb, or seas so wane,But they left Hope-seed to fill up again.Herrick.

Never did moon so ebb, or seas so wane,

But they left Hope-seed to fill up again.

Herrick.

But even in the black abysses of the hell down which he had fallen, a flower could grow to the eye of Manton. It was the strange birth of a wizard evil place; yet, as it spread beneath his nourishing eye and hand, it daily grew more beautiful to him. It may have been the unconscious contrast of a something young, living, and blooming in an unnatural sphere like this, where he, with the sudden weight of centuries upon him, breathed with such heavy gasping. He could not tell what it was that thickened this drear air; he only felt the oppression on his lungs, and shuddered when sleep had partly sobered him, and he could realise it for the hour. His sympathies had been first touched for that ugly, impish, persecuted child, to which we have frequently referred, because he saw, at once, that the mother’s querulous jealousy was forever subjecting it to a species of covert torture, which kept it always haggard and wretched. Had it been a sick and neglected kitten on the hearth, he would have felt for it the same kind of sympathy. He accordingly noticed and caressed the child, and endeavoured to rouse its low, ignoble frontal region into activity. The response of a hungry and vivid animality, surprised him with its aptitude of apparent intelligence. He did not understand that marvellous faculty of imitation which, in all the animal tribes approximating man, or which, in other words, are born with embryo souls, assumes the external semblances of intelligent expression. The faculty of music is below man, and common both to bird and beast; andhe had yet to learn, to his heavy cost, how a perception and detection of the physical harmonies of sound may be utterly distinct from the spiritual comprehension of their meaning. He had yet to fearfully realise how this insensate aptitude of harmony, which enables the monkey of the organ-grinder to dance in perfect time the most wild and rapid strathspey that ever Highland pibroch rung, or a stupid parrot to whistle the divinest strains of Mozart, could yet bestow upon the combined parrot and monkey of our own race that semblant mockery of the “gift of tongues,” the use of the soul’s higher language. In a word, he would have been greatly shocked to hear the affiliated Poll and Jocko talk down Shelley in his own etherealisms, and appal Byron with the mad bravado of forgotten lines from his own reckless and besotted misanthropy.

Poll and Jocko are easy enough to detect through all the human disguises of their combined powers, if the man of common sense and society meets the impersonation for the first time, when developed, or in most of the latter stages of development. But it was a very different thing with poor Manton, who only saw an undeveloped, abject animal, from which he expected little but the gratitude of the brute for protection, and from which anything like a vivid response was as surprising as it was unconsciously gratifying to his egotism, for the reason that all that was really pleasurable in it was owing to the fact of its constituting a close reflection of his own mind.

Gradually the feeling took possession of him, as he observed in her an excessive sensibility, that could weep at a moment’s warning, and laugh like April through the glistening storm in the next instant, that he would make amends for the great sin of his life, in working upon this sensitive organisation for good. The fine delicate chords of this frail instrument might be made to respond to the divinest notes; and this creature, with developed brain and expanding soul, become a medium of the loftiest intelligence—aye, be even to him the consoler of after years.The idea was a strange one, but it suited the intellectual audacity of Manton for that very reason.

It seemed to his darkened hopelessness, that here, through the innocence of childhood, he might renew that broken chain of living light which held him in communion with the upper world, until its blackened, severed links, falling about him, had left his manacled soul in hopeless bondage. He dreamed that if he guarded it with holy zeal, his prayers might rise upon the first odors that went up from this strange young flower to Heaven, and bring its light down too, in forgiveness, to him.

He did not know—for he had fed on poisons until it had become a kind of second nature to him, as to that old Pontiac king—that the pure light of spheres could never reach him through this lurid glare, which he had now come to think the natural day—that the odor of no flower could rise through its thickened air to meet the keen, grey stars. The man became bewildered with the gorgeous dream he nourished; and, day by day, without knowing why, he threw himself between the child and the baleful shadow of its mother. He spread his hands above her in blessing; he watched that he might shield her.

From the moment when his attention had been first attracted to her, she seemed to become illuminated; her ungainly body appeared assuming the lines of beauty; her mean, harsh features, softened, as the gnarled shrub assumes, in slow unfolding, the graceful mellowed drapery of spring. The coarse, elfin locks, grew tamed and smooth; a dark blue, in soft and gradual displacement, entered the sharp, greenish, animal eyes. The low, ape-like forehead, swelled above meekly-curved brows that had lost their hirsute squareness. Indeed, so rapid was the expansion of the frontal region, that it absolutely startled and affrighted the devout experimenter, when he placed his hand upon it, and felt it almost lifted by the wild throbbings beneath. The work was progressingtoofast; he feared that the general health of the subject might fail; but how to check and remedy this powerful reaction, so as to control it from fatal results, now sofully occupied the spiritual subtilty of the man, as to leave him little time to think of himself.

The loathsome contact of the reptile mother daily grew more abhorrent to him; and her characteristic cunning soon discovered that she had no real hold upon him herself, and at once encouraged this growing interest in the daughter, with the same assiduous art that she had before displayed in tormenting her with jealous gibes. Through this help she hoped he might be held within her reach. She had already, by her malapert, silly, malignant interference, so far completed his ruin as to have brought about a desperate, and finally fatal collision, between himself and his business associate in the Journal, which his genius had built up; and now he was thrown again to struggle hap-hazard with the world, he had become more reckless and desperate than before, so that she feared he might, at any time, break away from his bondage, and that, too, while he was still of use to her, and before she had gloated fully upon his ruin. She had studiously taught the child the process of those infernal arts, of which we have seen something; and, although the creature understood nothing of therationaleinvolved, yet her imitative cunning made her a most sharp pupil and practitioner.

By saying that the child did not understand, we mean to convey, that she could not have explained to herself, or to others, what effect certain manipulations would produce specifically; yet she had a feeling of them, a vicious intuition, that answered with her all the purposes of intellection. To look at her through the eyes of Manton, the uncouth and grotesque girl had become a fond and graceful plaything, that clung about him in soft caresses, that kept his heart warmed towards her, and caused him to regard the mother even with a modified sense of the growing disgust which was possessing him, and of which her shrewd insight made her fully aware.

Her child had become necessary as a bait—and her child let it be—for, in her hideous creed, nothing was sacred. She was filled towards her victim with fierce yearnings, and, had shepossessed the actual entity of soul, would have loved him madly—but no, she hated him, as the slave hates the despotic master to whom he hourly cringes for each favor. In a word, she hated him as a man—or in his double capacity of a spiritual being, rather; and, as even her hate was secondary, her appetites towards him were those of the weir-wolf for mankind. She would devour him body and soul, but she meant to feast alone.

Fearing lest the tenderness of his nature might be too strongly moved towards the child, if not diverted in other directions, she at once set her subtle wits to work to furnish her “Tiger,” as she called him, with sufficient toys of the same kind to keep him quiet, and avert the chances of his leaning more towards one than another. Some letters were hastily despatched to New England, and the result was the appearance of a fair and gentle child, about the age of her own.

Elna and the stranger, Moione, sprang into each other’s arms when they met, as if their very heart were one. They were fast friends, it seemed, and a thousand times had Elna said how dearly she loved the gentle Moione; and so jealous were the children of their first meeting, that Manton saw little of either for several days. A glance at the broad, serene brow, great, clear eyes, and delicate mouth of the new-comer, filled him with a strange, inexplicable sense of confidence, and even relief; which he could not well explain, to be sure, because it was too undefined to himself. He could only wonder how that white-browed creature came in such a place. It seemed as though it were a promise, answering to his prayer for the elfish Elna, that this calm spirit should have descended in their midst.

The vehement and headstrong petulance of her nature promised to find here a balance that would sober it within the bounds of reason; and strangely, although he saw hope for her, and for his own yet undefined purpose in her development, he saw nothing definitely in the stranger, but a good angel sent to aid him. His soul went out to greet her, but was it yet his heart?

These children were both dedicate to art; and Manton found it now by far the most pleasing occupation, to watch and give direction to the rapid unfolding of this instinct for the creative. The newly-aroused intellect of Elna here displayed many impish and brilliant characteristics of the imitative faculty, that might easily have been mistaken, by a less partial observer than Manton, for genius. These peculiarities were strikingly contrasted with the placid, but vigorous style of Moione, to a degree that one formed the exact offset to the other, not alone in art, but in all physical and mental, as well as spiritual idiosyncrasies. As these children grew upon him, there seemed something strangely familiar in them to Manton. He often tried to account for this to himself. Had he seen them before in dreams? Had he known them in some different world, and in a previous stage of being? Why was it that the vehement eccentricities of temper, the elfin wildness of motion, and light, mocking spirit of this child Elna, all seemed to him so familiar? Why was it that the coming of the fair-browed Moione had surprised him so little? There was that in her pure, calm face to startle most observers; yet, from the first, he had looked upon it as a matter of course, and as if he had unconsciously waited for her to arrive. Why was it that he had felt comforted since she came? What was it, in that name of hers, that sounded to him so much like a half-forgotten music-note?

So he had questioned himself a thousand times, becoming each day more puzzled than the last, until accident furnished him with the curious solution of this mystery. One day, in looking over a pile of old manuscripts, he found one, upon which he seized, with an unaccountable thrill. In an instant the whole thing flashed upon him—

“I have it! I have it! Here the mystery is solved at last! Strange, that I should so utterly have forgotten this manuscript! Two years ago, before I ever saw these people, this strange foreshadowing of what seems now a reality in my life, came to me in a summer’s day-dream; and I wrote it off, to be thrownaside and forgotten until this moment. It seems the most wonderful coincidence. I am no believer in miracles, but this appears a marvellous reach of the soul into the future; I was conscious of nothing when I wrote, but the pleasure of embodying in words what seemed to me a beautiful thought; strange, it should have been thus thrown aside and so utterly forgotten, until the increasing coincidences of my present relation have gradually forced me back to find it! What blind instinct, struggling in me, sent me here to look through these old manuscripts, with no definite purpose? What vague struggle of consciousness and memory is this, that has been moving me for weeks to understand why it is those children seem so familiar to me? Strange! strange! strange!”

Manton now proceeded to read this curious manuscript, the contents of which we shall also place before you:—

Friend, do you know the Mocking-Bird? I warrant, if he is a familiar of your childhood, you have a thousand times wondered at the strange malignant intelligence which characterises his tyrannical supremacy over all the feathered singers. Not only is he “accepted king of song,” but he is the pest and terror of the groves and meadows. Spiteful and subtle, he conquers in battle, or by manœuvre, all in reach of him; and you may easily detect his favourite haunts, by the incessant din and clatter of wrath and fear he keeps up by his malicious mockery among his neighbors. From my earliest childhood, I can remember having been singularly impressed by the weird and curious humors of this creature. Since those times of innocent wonder, I have been a wide wanderer. The prepossessions of my fancy were irresistibly attracted by the wild legend I give below. It was told me by an old Wako warrior.

On a hill-side, above an ancient village of his tribe, while we were stretched upon the grass beneath a moss-hung live-oak, herelated it. The moon was out, gilding with silver alchemy the shrub-crowned crests of prairie undulations—piled, as we may conceive the waves of the ocean would be—stayed by a word from heaven, while on the leap before a tempest. It was a fitting scene for such a story. Out from the dark gorges on every side ascended the night-song of the mocking-bird. The old man had listened to the rapid gushing symphonies for some time in silence, then drawing a long breath he remarked—“That is an evil bird!” I begged him for an explanation, and he proceeded.

Those peculiarities, indeed, of the Indian’s phraseology—those broken-pointed expressions, so condensed and meaning, and eked out continually by significant gestures, I could hardly hope to convey, were I fully able to remember them. The wild and fanciful methods of the Indian mind, believing what it dwells upon, yet half conscious that it is dreaming, are difficult to remember or repeat. We can only do the best we may to preserve the idiosyncracies.

“Yahshan, the Sun,” said the old chief, pausing reverently as he uttered the name, “in his great wigwam beyond the big waters, made the first Wako! He laid him in his fire-canoe and oared his way up through the thick mists that hung everywhere. When his arm tired of pulling, he took him out and stretched him upon his back on a wide dark bank, and then rowed on his path and left him. The Wako lay like the stem of an oak, still and cold. Before Yahshan entered his night-lodge in the west, a dim hazy light had hung over the figure, but this only made its broad couch look blacker—for nothing that had form could be seen. Yahshau, the Moon—the pale bride of Yahshan—came forth when he had gone in, and rowed her silver bark through the ugly shadows above the Wako, to watch lest the spirits that hated Yahshan should do harm to his work, which it had taken him many long ages to finish. He was very proud of it, and the evil spirits hated him that he had made a thing so goodly to look upon; and they drifted hideousphantom shapes across the way of Yahshau, and tried to overwhelm her light canoe, but its keen shining prow cut through them all, and left them torn and ragged behind her. At last they fled, for when her eye was on the mute form of the Wako, they feared to do it any harm. When all were gone, and nothing that looked like mischief was to be seen, she too went in. And then they flocked out from the deep places where they had been hid, and gathered with hot fingers and red eyes about the quiet Wako. He did not stir, for his senses had not yet been waked. Quick they pried open his clenched teeth, and poured a green smoking fluid down his throat. Just then the prow of the fire-canoe appeared parting the eastern mists, and they all fled.

“Yahshan came on. He looked upon his work and smiled—for he did not know that evil had been wrought—and came now in glory, riding on golden billows, scattering the chill mists that clung around the icy form, for it was time to waken it up with life. He rolled the yellow flood upon it, and the figure shivered; again the glowing waves pass over it—the figure was convulsed—tossed its limbs about, and rocked to and fro. Its eyes were open, but it saw not; its ears were open, but it heard not; it was tasteless and dumb; it smelt not, nor did it feel. Life had gone into it, and the heart beat, the pulses throbbed, the blood coursed fast, and it was monstrous strong. But what was this? Being, self-fed and self-consumed, hung upon the void of midnight, hurried and driven from its own still gathering impulse through a chaos of crude matter. That green liquid of the evil one now rushed in burning currents through the veins, and it dashed away, crawling, leaping, tumbling, like a mad torrent, over piled-up rocks across the dark plains, striking against hard, formless things, and rebounding to rush on more swiftly, till it had left the fire-canoe and Yahshan all astounded, far behind, and the terror of darkness was beneath and above it. But what was this to it? On! on! the green fire still burned within, and it must go—chasms and cliffs, withjagged rocks—into them, over them all. What were rough points and bruises, and crashing down steeps, and midnight to it? There was no feeling, yet the heart leaped, the blood careered, the limbs must follow. Motion, blind motion—no control, no guide—but through and over everything, move it must.

“The bad spirits thronged after it, grating and clanging their scaly pinions against each other, and creaking their pleasant gibes, when suddenly there was no footing, and the headlong form pitched down, downward, whirling through the empty gloom, while all the herd of ill things laughed and flapped themselves in the prone wake behind it.

“At once, with a sigh of wings, like a sharp moan of tree-harps, a shape of light shot arrowy down amidst them. They scattered, howling with affright. It bore up the falling Wako on strong, shining vans an instant, then stretching them out, subsided slowly, and laid it on a soft, dark couch again. This was Ah-i-wee-o, the soul of harmonies, the good spirit of sweet sounds. She is the great queen of spirit-land. Yahshan and Yahshau are her slaves; and all the lesser fire-canoes that skim in Yahshau’s train obey her. She gives all life its outer being; to know and feel beyond itself—without her, life is only motion. There is no form, no law, no existence beside, for she holds and grants them each sense, and in them reveals all these. Yahshan could give life—but not content with this, he was ambitious. The formless chaos his fire-canoe sailed over must be a world of beauty! A soul dwelt in it, but that world was passionless and barren. Yahshan had given life to many shapes, but the cold spirit had scorned them all; and yet she must be wooed to wed herself to life, that, out of the glow of that embrace, might spring the eternal round of thoughts made vital, clothed out of shapeless matter with symmetry. He planned an impious scheme. He would not pray the good Ah-i-wee-o for aid, but would act alone, and be the great Medicine Spirit. He would frame a creature from out the subtlest elements withinthis chaos, so exquisite that, when it came to live, confusion would be harmonised in it, and the order of its being go forth the law of beauty and of form to all. Then that coy spirit of desolation would be won at last, and passing into its life, a royal lineage would spring forth, and procreation wake insensate matter in myriad living things, gorgeous ideals, harmoniously wrought, and self-producing forever. All these would be his subjects, and he would rule, with Yahshau, this most excellent show himself! So he labored on, in the deep chambers of his night-lodge, through many cycles. The work was finished. It lay in state, within his golden wigwam at the east, that Yahshau and her glittering train might look upon it and wonder. Then he carried it forth; but evil spirits are wise, and, though it was a mighty work, they knew that it was too daring, and that Ah-i-wee-o would punish its presumption, and would not let the senses wake with life; so they poured that fearful fluid in, that fires the blood, and makes life slay itself. They say the white man has dealt with them, has learned from them the spell of that bad magic, and makes his “fire-water” by it. So when Yahshan waked up life, its power waked too; for he knew not of the craft, and it tore the glorious work from out his hands, while they flew behind and mocked him.

“Ah-i-wee-o bent over the swooning Wako; for the life that had been so tumultuous scarcely now stirred his pulse. She was a thing of beams, silvery and clear; a warm, lustrous light clung around her limbs and showed their delicate outline. She floated on the air, her wings and figure waving with its eddies, like the shadows of a Lee-ka-loo bird upon the sea. Her eyes, deep as the fathomless blue heaven, looked down on him with pity and unutterable gentleness. It was a marvellous work the overdaring Yahshan had accomplished. Beautiful, exceedingly, was that mute form, and rarely exquisite its finish. Must that glorious mechanism be destroyed, and all the noble purpose of its framing be lost? No! She moves her tiny, flower-like hand above it, and every blotch and all the bruises disappear,and it was fair to view, and perfect as when Yahshan had given it the last touch. Now she stooped beside and touched him, white sparks flew up, and she sang a low song. At the first note, the dark, formless masses round them quivered and rocked: the Wako smiled; for feeling now first thrilled along his nerves. The song rose; the dumb things shook and stirred the more. She touched his nostrils and his lips; the sparks played between her small fingers and danced up. Yet a louder note swelled out, and the thick mists swayed and curled, and a cool wind rushed through them, and dashed a stream of odor on his face. He drew long breaths, and sighed with the burden of delight, and moved his lips to inarticulate joy; and now that wondrous song pealed out clear, ringing bursts that shook the blue arch and swung the fire-boats, cadent with its gushes; and through the dim mists great shapes, like rocks and trees, leaped to the measure, marshalling in lines and order. Now she pressed his eyelids with her fingers; the silver sparks sprung in exulting showers, snapping and bursting with sweet smells. Once more, pealing triumphant, a keen, shining flood, that symphony poured wilder forth; his eyes fly open, and that heavy mist, like a great curtain, slowly rises. First the green grass and the flowers, bending beneath the gentle breeze, turn their deep eyes and spotted cups towards him in salutation, and all the creeping things and birds, that love the low herbs, dew-besprent, are there: and as the mist goes up, majestically slow, other forms of bird and beast are seen, and dark trunks of trees, and great stems beside them, looking like trees, until his eyes have traced them up to the great moose, the big-horned stag, the grizzly bear, and the vast-moving mammoth. But then it has drunk the harmony of grades; for all are there. And, side by side, he marks how, from the crawler, every step ascends, in beautiful gradation; the last linked to the first in one all-perfect chain. Then came the knotted limbs, with all their burden of green leaves; and, underneath, the round, yellow fruits, or purple flushing of rich clusters and gay forms, that flutter through themon wings of amethyst, or flame, or gold, their every movement a music-note, although all was dumb to him as yet. Still higher the mist-curtain goes; and the grey cliffs, with shining peaks, and a proud, fierce-eyed bird perched on them, meet his gaze; and then the mists float far away, and scatter into clouds, and all the splendor and the pomp of the thronged earth is spread, a gorgeous, but voiceless, revelation to his new being. With every touch of the enchantress, Ah-i-wee-o, the soul of chaos had passed into a sense; and all the pleasant harmonies the Wako felt, and all the scented harmonies the Wako tasted and inhaled—all the thoughts of harmony in grand or graceful forms the Wako saw—that blissful interpenetration gave conception to, and the magic of that powerful song brought forth. One more act, and his high marriage to eternity is consummated: ecstacy has found a voice, and all these harmonies articulation, yet his ears were sealed; and though music flowed in through every other sense, his dumb lips strove in vain to wake its language.

“But this was the supremest gift of all. This was the charm that had drawn beauty out of chaos—the magic by which Ah-i-wee-o ruled in spirit-land, and chained the powers of evil. It were death to spirits less than she, to hear the fierce crashing of those awful symphonies she knew. His nature could not bear the revelation. Besides, what had he to do with that celestial minstrelsy which led the heaven-fires on their rounds? There was ambition, full enough, up there; and Yahshan had been playing far too rashly on those burning keys. She would not curse this perfect being with a gift too high, and add another daring rebel to her realm! No! he must be ruler here, as she ruled everything. From all those harmonies he must extract the tone, and on it weave his song of power to lead them captive. This divine music is the voice of all the beautiful, the higher language of every sense; and not until the soul is brimmed to overflowing with sparkling thoughts of it, drank in through each of them, will the beamy current run, as streams doin the skies. He must lead the choir of all this being—yet, this infinite sense would overbear his nature, if suddenly revealed; it can only wake in other creatures, as its birth matures in him—and he shall go forth into silence—every living thing shall be mute—and from the low preluding of the waters and the winds the first notes of his exulting powers shall be learned, and they shall learn of him—until all the air is one harmony—all breath takes music on, and echoes bear the twice-told glee—until fainter, more faint, it is gone!

“She touched his ears—the sparks leaped up—she pressed his lips with one entrancing kiss and sprang away. The quick moan of her pinions cleaving the air is the first sound that steals on the new sense, and stirs the dead vast of silence that weighs upon his being. And now myriad soft wavelets of the infinite ocean follow—breaking gently over him—the whisper of quivering leaves to the caressing zephyr, the low tremble of the forest-chords, and the deep booming of great waves afar off; the ring and dash of cascades nearer, the tinkling of clear drops in caves, the gush and ripple of cold springs, the beat of pulses, the purr of breathings, and the hum of wings, in gentlest ravishment possess his soul—for now is the bridal of his immortality consummate in a delirium of bliss, and lulled upon his couch he sweetly sinks into the first sleep.

“The Wako is roused next morning by a warm flood from the fire-canoe—for Yahshan had come forth right royally, and though Ah-i-wee-o had humbled his presumption and would not permit him to be sole lord as he had hoped, yet all he had dared attempt had been accomplished, and he believed it to be in full his own work, and thus wore all his panoply of splendor in honor of his glorious creation. The Wako rose, and lo! around him as far as the eye could reach, a mighty multitude of all the animals of the earth were rising too. They waited for their king, and it was he. They came flocking around him to caress him in obeisance—a gentle, eager throng!

“The panther stroked his sleek glossy fur against his legs androlled and gambolled like a kitten at his feet. The great bear of the north rubbed his jaws against his hand and begged to be caressed. Big mountain (the mammoth) thrust his huge tusks in for a touch; and the white-horned moose bowed his smooth-bristled neck and plead with meek black eyes for notice. All the huge grotesque things pressed around, and the smaller creatures, pied, flecked, and dotted, crowded beneath their heavy limbs, unhurt—all, full of confidence and love, gracefully sporting to win one glance.

“Above him the air was thick with wings, and the whirr and winnowing of soft plumes made pleasant music, and the play of brilliant hues was like a thousand rainbows arched and waving over him; and the little flame-like things would flutter near his face, and gleam their sharp brown eyes into his, and strive, in vain, to warble out their joy, for their sweet pipes were not yet tuned.

“All were there, great and small; and the wide-winged eagle came from its high perch and circled round his head, and brushed its strong plumes with light caressing, through his hair. He went with them into the forest burdened with rich fruits, and ate, then shook the heavy clusters down for them. Then he passed forth to look upon the land, the first shepherd, with that countless flock thronging about his steps.

“It was, indeed, a lovely land! Here a rolling meadow, there a heavy wood; the trees all bearing fruits, or hung with vines and bloom. A still, deep river, doubled sky and trees in its clear mirror, and he gazed, in a half-waking wonder, when the ripples the swan-trains made, shivered it to glancing fragments.

“But wander which way he might, he came to tall gray cliffs, with small streams, that pitched from their cloudy summits, and bounding off from the rough crags below, filled all the valley with cool spray.

“He found his lovely world was fenced about with square towering rocks, that nothing without wings could scale. Butthere was room enough for all, and profuse plenty the fruitful earth supplied.

“At noon, he went beneath a grove of sycamores, where a great stream gushed out, and laid him down beside its brink, while his subjects stretched and perched around him, in the shade, to rest. His sleep was broken by strange new melodies that crept in. He opened his eyes; near him were two maidens, and all the birds and beasts were gathered around them, and they were singing gay, delicious airs, teaching the birds to warble.

“One of them was fair—white as the milk-white fawn that licked her hand and gazed up at her musical lips; but her hair was dark and a strong light gleamed in her small black eye. This was Ki-ke-wee. She sung and laughed and kissed the song-bird that perched upon her finger, and when it tried to follow her wild carol, she mocked its blunders and stamped her tiny foot, and frowned and laughed and warbled yet a wilder symphony to puzzle it the more.

“The other was a darker maiden with large, gentle eyes. This was Mnemoia; her voice was soft and low—and she sang sweet songs and looked full of love and patience. The Wako half rose in joy and wonder. They bounded towards him—sang a rapturous roundelay to a giddy, whirling dance, then threw their arms about his neck and kissed him. They became his squaws, and Yahshau smiled upon them as she sailed by that night.

“The Wako was very happy and Ki-ke-wee was his favorite. She grew very lovely and full of curious whims that each day became more odd. She loved the blue jay most among the birds, and taught him all his antics; and the magpie was a pet; and the passionate, bright hummer lived about her lips.

“As yet nothing but sounds and scenes of love were in that little world; and the strong, terrible brutes knew not that they had fierce passions or the taste for blood; but Ki-ke-wee would stand before the grizzly bear and pluck his jaws and switch hisfierce eyeballs until he learned to growl with pain, and then she would mock him; and when he growled louder she would mock him still, until at last he roared with rage and sprang upon the panther—for he feared Ki-ke-wee’s eye!—and the panther tasted blood and sprang to the battle fiercely. And now the tempest broke, and everything with claws and fangs howled in the savage discord. Ki-ke-wee clapped her hands and laughed. Mnemoia raised the enchantment of her song above it all, and it was stilled. Then Ki-ke-wee would tease the eagle and mock him till he screamed and dashed at the great vulture in his rage; and she would dance and shout for joy; and Mnemoia would quell it, then go aside and weep.

“The Wako loved the beautiful witch, and when he plead with her she would mock even him, and every day and every hour this mocking elf stirred some new passion, until at last even Mnemoia’s song had lost its charm, and the bear skulked in the deep thickets and shook them with his growl, and the panther moaned from out the forest, and the gaunt wolves snapped their white teeth and howled, and all the timid things fled away from these fierce voices; and battle, and blood, and death, were rife where love and peace had been. The birds scattered in affright and sung their new songs in snatches only; and hateful sounds of deadly passions, and the screams and wails of fear, resounded everywhere.

“Ki-ke-wee made a bow and poisoned the barbed arrow, and mocked the death-bleat of the milk-white fawn when the Wako shot it at her tempting. This was too much! Ah-i-wee-o cursed her and she fell. The Wako knelt over her and wept; and when the dissolving spasm seemed upon her, he covered his face with his hands and wailed aloud. A voice just above him wailed too! He looked up surprised; a strange bird with graceful form and sharp black spiteful eyes was mocking him! He looked down—Ki-ke-wee was gone; and the strange bird gaped its long bill hissing at him; and when it spread its wingsto bound up from the twig in an ecstacy of passion, he knew by the broad white stripes across them that it was Ki-ke-wee!

“He found the neglected Mnemoia weeping in the forest; and soon after they scaled the cliffs and fled from that fair land to hide from Ki-ke-wee. But she has followed them and mocks their children yet, and we dare not slay her, for the wise men think she was the daughter of the Evil Spirit that poured the green fluid down the Wako’s throat, and that the same bad fire burns yet in our veins. Our hunters chasing the mountain-goat sometimes look from the bluffs into that lovely vale that lies in the bosom of the Rocky Mountain chain, but they never venture to go down!”

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