After mumbling certain incantations which no one understood, he drew from his girdle a case made from a hollow bone and taking from it needles of fish bone and certain pigments; tattooed upon the chest of the boy an enlarged likeness of the cross he wore; and beneath it pricked the tribal sign of the Mingo priesthood. All this the little boy endured without outcry, though his face was ashy pale and his colorless lips moved in prayer.
Then the priest took from his own waist a girdle of wampum of unusual pattern and fastened it about the waist of the boy and extending his hands above the boy's head, murmured yet more of his incantations. Then indicating the ceremony was completed, walked away.
The boy was told to go to his lodge. As he stepped over the threshold he dropped apparently lifeless; and no wonder; he had been subjected to a terrible strain and his blood was filled with impure pigments.
He was carried by Logan to their lodge and placed upon a pallet of deer skins. An old woman was called to attend him. He lay in a deep sleep until sundown, when he sat up and was given food and drink. A few minutes later he dropped back into unconsciousness which lasted for eighteen hours; at the end of which time, rousing from his torpor, he walked to a brook, where he bathed, removing all the grease and pigment. The tattooed cross and Mingo tribal signs stood out upon his body like a great blotch of blood on a statue of white marble. He returned to his pallet, smiled at Dorothy and after eating slept again.
For several days he was in a stupor and slept much of the time. At the end of a week the tattooed marks were no longer inflamed and he had recovered.
Not far from the village on the brow of a hill was a green mound, which rumor said was a place of burial; though the Indians knew not what people had made or used it. As the view from its summit was extensive, the timber having been burned away, the mound was used for signal fires and because of superstition, never visited except for that purpose.
John Calvin, who was the only child in the village permitted to go where he pleased, even to the council lodge and that of the medicine man, each day climbed to the summit and for an hour or more sat upon the signal rock, scarcely moving, lost in dreams or visions. The whole tribe watched him with superstitious awe.