“But,” insisted the cynical young man from the city, “I had not been taught to think of God as of one who forgets! Do you know what I would do if I had no confidence in the executive ability of my God?”
Taking the subsequent silence as a question, the young man answered: “Why, I would take a day off and whittle one out of wood!”
“A youth’s way is the wind’s way,” quoted the preacher, with a paternal air.
“And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts; but what is all this noise about?” returned the reporter.
A buzz of expectant voices had grown at one end of the oval, and had spread contagiously throughout the elliptical strip of shade. For with slow, majestic step the medicine-man, Mahowari, entered the enclosure and walked toward the centre. The fierce sun emphasised the brilliancy of the old man’s garments and glittered upon the profusion of trinkets, the magic heirlooms of the medicine-man. It was not the robe nor the dazzling trinkets that caught the eye of one acquainted with Mahowari. It was the erectness of his figure, for he had been bowed with years, and many vertical suns had shone upon the old man’s back since his face had been turned toward the ground. But now with firm step and form rigidly erect he walked.
Any sympathetic eye could easily read the thoughts that passed through the old man’s being like an elixir infusing youth. Now in his feeble years would come his greatest triumph! To-day he would sing with greater power than ever he had sung. Wakunda would hear the cry. The rains would come! Then the white men would be stricken with belief!
Already his heart sang before his lips. In spite of the hideous painting of his face, the light of triumph shone there like the reflection of a great fire.
Slowly he approached the circle of drummers who sat in the glaring centre of the ellipse of sunlight. It was all as though the First Century had awakened like a ghost and stood in the very doorway of the Twentieth!