“Sakani udunuhi nigesuna usinuliyu! Yu!”
“Grant that she may never become unhappy! Yu!”
Then lifting the fresh leafage aloft, the cheerataghe, with a solemn gesture, sprinkled the water into her astounded face.
“Safe! Safe!” the interpreter continued to translate his words. “Safe forever! She and hers can never know harm in the land of the Cherokee. Not even a spirit of the air may molest her; no ghost of the departed may haunt her sleep; not the shadow of a bird can fall upon her; no vagrant witch can touch her with malign influence.”
“Ha-usinuli nagwa ditsakuni denatlu hisaniga uy-igawasti dudanti!” declared the cheerataghe.
“We have keenly aimed our arrows against the accursed wanderers of darkness!” chanted the interpreter.
“Nigagi! Nigagi!”
“Amen! Amen!”
A breathless silence ensued. No word. No stir. The amazement depicted on the faces of the staring officers, the dubitation intimated in Captain Howard’s corrugated, bushy eye-brows, the perplexity in Mrs. Annandale’s eagerly observant, meagre little countenance, were as definite a comment as if voiced in words. This was all caviare indeed to their habits of mind, accustomed as they were to the consideration of material interests and the antagonisms of flesh and blood. But the pale ascetic face of the old missionary was kindled with a responsive glow that was like the shining of a flame through an alabaster vase, so pure, so exalted, so vivid an illumination it expressed, so perfect a comprehension this spark of symbolism had ignited.
As a type of covenant the suggestions afforded by this incident occupied several learned pages of Mr. Morton’s recondite work on “Baptism in its Various Forms in Antient and Modern Times,” published some years afterward, a subject which gratefully repays amplification and is susceptible of infinite speculation. The peculiar interest which the occasion developed for him served to annul the qualms of conscience which he had suffered, despite which, however, instigated by the old Adam of curiosity, he had permitted himself to be present at the restoration of the conjuring-stone to its mission of delusion.