And, joining hands, they cried, sweetly: "Come, O Little Rosebud Woman!--Ke-neance-e-qua! O-gin-e-o-qua!--Woman of the Rose!"
And all together the False-Faces cried: "Welcome to Ta-lu-la, the leaping waters! Here is I-é-nia, the wanderer's rest! Welcome, O Woman of the Rose!"
Then the grotesque throng of the False-Faces parted right and left; a lynx, its green eyes glowing, paced out into the firelight; and behind the tawny tree-cat came slowly a single figure--a young girl, bare of breast and arm; belted at the hips with silver, from which hung a straight breadth of doeskin to the instep of her bare feet. Her dark hair, parted, fell in two heavy braids to her knees; her lips were tinted with scarlet; her small ear-lobes and finger-tips were stained a faint rose-color.
In the breathless silence she raised her head. Sir George's crushing grip clutched my arm, and he fell a-shuddering like a man with ague.
The figure before us was Magdalen Brant.
The lynx lay down at her feet and looked her steadily in the face.
Slowly she raised her rounded arm, opened her empty palm; then from space she seemed to pluck a rose, and I saw it there between her forefinger and her thumb.
A startled murmur broke from the throng. "Magic! She plucks blossoms from the empty air!"
"O you Oneidas," came the sweet, serene voice, "at the tryst of the False-Faces I have kept my tryst.
"You wise men of the Six Nations, listen now attentively; and you, ensigns and attestants, attend, honoring the truth which from my twin lips shall flow, sweetly as new honey and as sap from April maples."