At these words, each priest and chief bent the head, and covered his face with his robe.
“The augury may be averted. Arise, thou cowardly priest, and prepare the sacrifice,” cried Acashee.
They sprung to their feet and gazed upon the bold speaker, and she a woman. They accepted the omen, and gathered about the altar.
Acashee had bound a white tunic over her shoulders; she had crowned her head with the leaves of the sacred mistletoe, sacred to the Indian as well as to the Druid, because it is a parasite, and lives on the blood of another, scorning the coarse, damp ground. She stood with outstretched arms, and pointed to Hope Vines.
“Take her and appease the spirit, and save our braves!”
But Acashee had not foreseen the awe with which the pale child inspired those children of the woods. Eager to crush her rival—eager to immolate her upon the altar of her revenge, she had hoped to see them rush forward and hurl her upon the stone of sacrifice, bleeding and quivering in death, and thus her triumph had been complete.
Hope stood calm and silent, her small hands crossed and spread upon her breast, her eyes raised upward, an image of saintly grace and purity.
Some thought of ecstacy, some wild dream of beauty, some vision of supernal realms, may have descended upon the soul of the lonely child, separated from kindred, and for years, as we have intimated, consigned to this solitary grotto. Her person robed in skins of the softest and whitest texture, her hair grown so as to nearly reach her feet, her skin of the purest white, with dark eyebrows and long black eyelashes, gave a depth and splendor to her eyes, dazzling to behold; and thus she stood in the midst of a race foreign and uncomprehending, except that a divine instinct impressed them with awe. The light of the burning torches illuminated the far-off arches, changing the pellucid pendents of the roof to topaz, sapphire and ruby; showing vista beyond vista of snowy arch and crystal dome, resplendent in a thousand prismatic hues, and she in the midst, like some embodiment of supernatural beauty; a dazzling creature, compounded of those elemental forces which preside over rock and fall, such as the genius of Greece has left as the creations of the classical mind.
The Indians beheld her with awe, and knelt before her. Even the vindictive Acashee stood silent, spell-bound by a spirit which had mastered her own.
At length slowly raising her hand upward, she spoke in a clear voice, and yet with a something in its tone as if it came a long distance.