ling Sayap, who stood still, crying and
bleeding, he thrust out his tongue at them its full length, performed a
number of odious grimaces, and then nimbly clambered up between a group
of erosive cones that lay in front of the cliff. He turned around once
more to yell defiance and scorn at his pursuers, and disappeared on the
other side. Farther pursuit being hopeless, the girls clustered around
the weeping Sayap and held a council of war. They vowed dire vengeance
on the lad, and promised their injured sister to improve the first
opportunity that should present itself.

Shyuote, on the other hand, felt proud of his success. His revenge was,
he felt, a glorious one. Still he was careful not to forget the counsels
of prudence, and instead of returning to the house by a direct route,
which might have carried him too near the enraged damsels, he sauntered
along, hugging the cliffs for some distance, and then cautiously sneaked
into the fields below the new homes of the Maize clan. Once in the corn
he felt safe, and was about to cross the brook to the south side, when
the willows bordering the streamlet rustled and tossed, and a voice
called to him from the thicket,--

"Where are you going, uak?"

Shyuote stopped, and looked around for the speaker; but nobody was
visible. Again the boughs rustled and shook, and there emerged from the
willows an old man of low stature, with iron-gray hair and shrivelled
features. He wore no ornaments at all; his wrap was without belt and
very dirty. In his left hand he held a plant which he had pulled up by
the roots. He stepped up to Shyuote, stood close by his side, and
growled at him rather than spoke.

"I asked you where you were going. Why don't you answer?"

Shyuote was frightened, and stammered in reply,--

"To see my father."

"Who is your father?"

"Zashue Tihua."

The features of the interlocutor took on a singular expression. It was
not one of pleasure, neither did it betoken anger; if anything, it
denoted a sort of grim satisfaction.

"If Zashue is your father," continued he, and his eyes twinkled
strangely, "Say Koitza must be your mother."

"Of course," retorted the boy, to whom this interrogatory seemed
ludicrous.

"And Okoya your brother," the old man persisted.

"Why do you ask all this?" inquired the child, laughingly.

A look, piercing and venomous, darted from the eyes of the questioning
man. He snarled angrily,--

"Because I ask it. I ask, and you shal