as not her husband's voice among them? Certainly he was
there, doing his duty with the rest. And if he was as guilty toward her
as the others? That monstrous thought rose again, it pushed her onward.
She crawled ahead slowly, scarcely conscious of the danger attending her
mission. Large blocks of debris, tent-shaped erosive hillocks, impeded
her progress; they crowded along the foot of the cliffs like protecting
bulwarks, and the trail wound around them on a higher plane. But this
trail she dared not follow, there was not enough darkness on it. She
crept along the base, the sense of danger coming to her with the
increasing obscurity, until suddenly she stood before a cleft of almost
inky hue. Here she remembered was the ascent to the estufa, here she had
to perform the work, and here overpowered by emotion and excitement she
dropped behind an angular block of stone unconscious.

When she recovered, the chorus sounded directly above her, and the chant
seemed to soar away like voices from an upper world. She glanced up the
dark fissure as through a flume. The cross-beams were faintly visible.
Over the cleft rested a moonlit sky, but to the rocks clung the figure
of a man. That man stood there a moment only, then shouting a few words
as if calling to somebody within, he disappeared. The song was hushed.
Say recognized the speaker; it was Tyope, Shotaye's former husband, and
the one whom the woman suspected of having done her harm. Resolutely she
went at her task.

Taking a bundle of owl's feathers from her wrap, she presented it
successively to the six regions, and then buried it carefully in the
sand, below where the first cross-beam traversed the fissure. Again she
listened and spied, and creeping forward concealed the second bunch in
another place near by. Then she whispered the sinister prayer which was
to give to the feathers the power to do harm. At the close the drum
rumbled again within the cliffs above her, and the chant rose strong and
rude. Covering her head, shaking and shivering with sudden fear, Say
Koitza rushed from the spot. Ere day broke she had reached home again,
and extended her weary frame by the side of her sleeping children.

Say slept for the remainder of the night a long sleep of exhaustion. The
next morning her first task was to bury the last bunch of owl's feathers
in the kitchen, close to the fireplace, where it was to protect her from
the inroads of enemies. She felt weak but rather comfortab