ce of it, but Say moved to avoid
the moisture. The roof seemed a sieve, the floor became a lagune.

Shotaye inquired,--

"Have the Koshare been here?"

"They have," the other said, "and they turned everything upside down,
but found nothing."

Shotaye drew a long breath, exclaiming,--

"Then everything is right, all right; and you are safe!"

But the wife of Zashue Tihua shook her head mournfully. "No, sa tao,"
she replied, "it cannot save me. I am lost, lost beyond hope."

"Rest easy, sister. Believe me," the medicine-woman assured her, "you
are saved; they can do you no harm."

It rained softly in the court-yard; inside of the room it went on, pat,
pat, pat, pat, dripping through the ceiling.

Shotaye resumed the conversation.

"Speak, sa tao," she said; "speak, and tell me what you think. Why is it
that you still believe that bad men will be able to do you harm? Don't
you know, sister, that you are safe from them now, and that they cannot
injure you any more?"

Say Koitza shook her head gloomily and replied, pointing to her ear and
eye,--

"Sanaya, what the ear hears and the eye sees, the heart must fain
believe."

"Then speak to me; tell me, sa uishe, what it is that your ear has
heard, your eye has seen, that makes your heart so sad." The woman spoke
softly, entreatingly, as if she was soothing a sick child. But the
object of her sympathy sighed, and continued, in the same tone of utter
despondency,--

"Sister, had you been present at the ayash tyucotz, when all the people
danced and sang, your eyes would have seen what the heart could not
approve. I saw my son Okoya Tihua, the child of Tanyi hanutsh, dancing
beside Mitsha Koitza, the girl from Tyame; and she is the daughter of
our base enemy."

[Illustration: Type of old Indian woman]

"Is that all that causes you trouble, koya?" Shotaye very placidly
asked. "Listen to me further, yaya," Say entreated. "This morning I
took the boy to task for it, and then I found out that Mitsha is near to
him,--nearer than his own mother. I discovered that he goes to see her,
and thus gets to the house of the woman of whom they say that she is
Tyope's ear and eye, tongue and mouth. What do you say to that, sa tao?"

Shotaye smiled. "Have you ever spoken to Mitsha?"

"Never!" exclaimed Say. "How could I speak to one whose mother is a
sand-viper, and whose father a carrion crow?"

"Is that all?"

"You know," Say cried, "how mean Tyope is! If my child goes