ritual. No man spoke a word, and when we met other companies the only
greeting was by uplifted hands.

The shelf was lit with fires, and there was a flare of torches in the
centre. I saw an immense multitude of lean, dark faces--how many I
cannot tell, but ten thousand at the least. It took all my faith to
withstand the awe of the sight. For these men were not the common
Indian breed, but a race nurtured and armed for great wars, disciplined
to follow one man, and sharpened to a needle-point in spirit. Perhaps
if I had been myself a campaigner I should have been less awed by the
spectacle; but having nothing with which to compare it, I judged this a
host before which the scattered Border stockades and Nicholson's scanty
militia would go down like stubble before fire.

At the head of the plateau, just under the brow of the hill, and facing
the half-circle of level land, stood a big tent of skins. Before it was
a square pile of boulders about the height of a man's waist, heaped on
the top with brushwood so that it looked like a rude altar. Around this
the host had gathered, sitting mostly on the ground with knees drawn to
the chin, but some few standing like sentries under arms. I was taken
to the middle of the half-circle, and Shalah motioned me to dismount,
while a stripling led off the horses. My legs gave under me, for they
were still very feeble, and I sat hunkered up on the sward like the
others. I looked for Shalah and Onotawah, but they had disappeared, and
I was left alone among those lines of dark, unknown faces.

I waited with an awe on my spirits against which I struggled in vain.
The silence of so vast a multitude, the sputtering torches, lighting
the wild amphitheatre of the hills, the strange clearing with its
altar, the mystery of the immense dusky sky, and the memory of what I