ee why, satyumishe? Don't you understand it? Say knows
Tyope; she mistrusts him and is even afraid of him. Mitsha is a good
girl, and your mother has nothing against her; but she is her mother's
daughter, and that mother is Tyope's wife. If Mitsha becomes your wife
you will go and live with her, until Tyame hanutsh has a house ready for
Mitsha. You will even have to stay at the home of Tyope's wife. Now I
cannot say that Hannay, the wife of Tyope, is really bad; she is not
nearly as bad as he, but then Hannay is silly and allows him to make her
his tool. Everything that concerns her clan--things that he of course is
not entitled to know--she tattles to him; and she tells him everything
else that she sees, hears, or imagines. I know it to be so. Now, your
mother is afraid lest through Mitsha's mother, first Mitsha, afterward
through her you, might become entangled in the coils of that sand-viper
Tyope. For I tell you, mot[=a]tza,"--his eyes flashed, and he shook his
clenched fist toward the houses of the Eagle clan,--"that man is a bad
man; he is bad from head to foot, and he thinks of nothing but injury to
others for the sake of his own benefit."

"But what has Tyope done? How do you know that he is such a bad man?"

"That's just it. He never acts openly. Like the badger, after which he
is named, he burrows and burrows in darkness and covers up his ways; and
when the earth caves in beneath those who walk over his trap and they
fall, he is already far away, and looks as innocent and bland as a
badger on top of the ground. But if you follow him, then he will turn
around and snap at you, like a real tyope. Your mother is right in
fearing him; perhaps not so much on her account as for your sake. You
and Mitsha are both very young, and that man knows how to entrap such
little rabbits."

Okoya could not deny the truth of his uncle's speech. He felt that he
had wronged his mother, had misinterpreted her motives; and now he was
ashamed of himself. Nevertheless Indian nature is exceedingly wary and
suspicious in all important matters, and it struck him that Hayoue was
trying to dissuade him from his project of union with Mitsha. Knowing
the propensities of his gallant uncle in the matter of women, he began
to suspect that the latter might wish to estrange him from the girl or
frighten him off in order to step into his shoes. So he assumed an air
of quiet indifference and said,--

"I think it is better, after all, not to see M