"Thus it runs, Carus, the legend of this John O'Bail, how he sought the wilderness, shunning his kind, and traveled and trapped and slew the deer, until one day at sunrise a maid of the People of the Morning hailed him, bidding him stay: "'Turn to the fire of dawn, John O'Bail, Turn to the fire of dawn; The doe that waits in the vale Was a fawn in the year that's gone!' And John O'Bail he heeds the hail And follows her on and on.
"Oh, Carus, they sang it and sang it, hammering their pewters together, and roaring the chorus, and that last dreadful verse: "'Where is the soul of you, John O'Bail, Where is the soul you slew? There's Painted Death on the trail, And the moccasins point to you. Shame on the name of John O'Bail----'"
She hesitated, peering through the shadows at me: "Who was John O'Bail, Carus? What is the Painted Death, and who are the People of the Morning?"
"John O'Bail was a wandering fellow who went a-gipsying into the Delaware country. The Delawares call themselves 'People of the Morning.' This John O'Bail had a son by an Indian girl--and that's what they made the ballad about, because this son is that mongrel demon, Cornplanter, and he's struck the frontier like a catamount gone raving mad. He is the 'Painted Death.'"
"Oh," she said thoughtfully, "so that is why they curse the name of John O'Bail."
After a moment she went on again: "Well, you'll never guess who it was singing away down there! I crept to my windows and peeped out, and there, Carus, were those two queer forest-running fellows who stopped us on the hill that morning----"
"Jack Mount!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, dear, and the other--the little wrinkled fellow, who had such strangely fine manners for a Coureur-de-Bois----"
"The Weasel!"
"Yes, Carus, but very drunk, and boisterous, and cutting most amazing capers. They went off, finally, arm in arm, shuffling, reeling, and anon breaking into a solemn sort of dance; and everybody gave them wide berth on the street, and people paused to look after them, marking them with sour visages and wagging heads--" She stopped short, finger on lips, listening.
Far up the street I heard laughter, then a plaintive, sustained howling, then more laughter, drawing nearer and nearer.
Elsin nodded in silence. I sprang up and descended the stairs. The tap-room was lighted with candles, and the sober burghers who sat within, savoring the early ale, scarce noted my entrance, so intent were they listening to the approaching tumult.
The peculiar howling had recommenced. Stepping to the open door I looked out, and beheld a half-dozen forest-runners, in all the glory of deep-fringed buckskin and bright wampum, slowly hopping round and round in a circle, the center of which was occupied by an angry town watchman, lanthorn lighted, pike in hand. As they hopped, lifting their moccasined feet as majestically as turkeys walking in a muddy road, fetching a yelp at every step, I perceived in their grotesque evolutions a parody upon a Wyandotte scalp-dance, the while they yapped and yowled, chanting: "Ha-wa-sa-say Ha! Ha! Ha-wa-sa-say!"