Royston's pleasure; for she
regarded "Polly Hopkins" very seriously indeed. Before the physician
quitted the "Boundary," the old squaw bestowed upon him, through the
interpreter, certain secret magic formulae for working enchantments on his
city patients, and thereby effecting rapid cures and filling his coffers.
Knowing of Bayne's hobby for linguistics, the oculist jocularly turned
these archaic curios over to him. In that connection Bayne recounted that
after the child had departed with his mother from the mountains, he
himself being detained by final arrangements with the authorities, his
interest in researches into the arcana of old Cherokee customs had been
revived by seeing the sibyl seated on the ground, swaying and wailing and
moaning, and casting ashes on her head as if making her mourning for the
dead. At the time he had marked the parity of the observance with the
Hebraic usage, and he intended to make an examination into the origin of
the curious tradition of the identity of the American Indians with the
lost tribes of Israel.
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