Reluctantly she permitted me to lay the packet in her arms, displeasure still darkening her brow. Then I set my lantern on the puncheon floor and stepped outside, closing the hatchet-battered door behind me.
How long I paced the foggy strip of clearing I do not know. The mist had thickened to rain when I heard the door creak; and, turning in my tracks, caught the lantern's sparkle on the threshold, and the dull gleam of her Oneida finery.
I picked up the lantern and held it high above us.
Smiling and bashful she stood there in her clinging skirt and wampum-broidered vest, her slender, rounded limbs moulded into soft knee-moccasins of fawn-skin, and the Virgin's Girdle knotted across her thighs in silver-tasselled seawan.
And, "Lord!" said I, surprised by the lovely revelation. "What a miracle are you in your forest masquerade!"
"Am I truly fine to please you, Euan?"
I said, disturbed, but striving to speak lightly:
"Little Oneida goddess in your bridal dress, the Seven Dancers are laughing at me from your eyes; and the Day-Sun and the Night-Sun hang from your sacred girdle, making it flash like silvery showers of seawan. Salute, O Watcher at the Gates of Dawn! Onwa oyah! Na-i! A-i! Lois!" And I drew my light war-hatchet from its sheath and raised it sparkling, in salute.
She laughed a little, blushed a little, and bent her dainty head to view her finery once more, examining it gravely to the last red quill sewed to the beaded toe-point.
Then, still serious, she lifted her grey eyes to me: