rpse was brought home, and
they heard the wail and rushed out on the roof. At that moment Hannay
had returned, full to the brim with the dismal news. Okoya forgot
everything and returned home, and Mitsha went back to the room and wept.
While her mother proceeded in her account with noisy volubility, Mitsha
cried; for Okoya had often spoken of his grandfather, telling her how
wise, strong, and good sa umo maseua was. She felt that the young man
looked up to him as to an ideal, and she wept quite as much because of
her feeling for Okoya as for the murdered main-stay of her people.

While she thus mourned from the bottom of her heart, the thought came to
her how she would feel in case her father was brought home in the same
way. Mitsha was a good child, and Tyope had always treated her not only
with affection but with kindness. He gave her many precious things, as
the Indian calls the bright-coloured pebbles, shell beads, base
turquoises, crystals, etc., with which he decorates his body. He liked
to see his daughter shine among the daughters of the tribe. With him it
was speculation, not affection; but Mitsha knew nothing of this, and
felt that in case her parent should ever be borne back to this house
dead, and placed on the floor before her covered with gore, she must
feel just as Okoya felt now. And yet the dead man was only his
grandparent. No, it was not possible for him to be as sad as she would
be in case Tyope should meet with such a fate. And then she wondered
whether the whole tribe would regret her father's death as much as they
regretted the loss of Topanashka. Something within her told that it
would not. She had already noticed that Tyope was not liked; but why,
she knew not. Okoya himself had intimated as much. She knew that the boy
shunned her father; and her attachment to Okoya had become so deep that
his utterances began to modify her feelings toward her own parents.

If she would sorrow and grieve for her father's loss, if Okoya was
mourning over his grandfather's demise, how must the child of the
murdered man, of such a man as Topanashka, feel? His only child was a
woman like herself. A true woman always feels for her sex and
sympathizes with other women's grief; and besides, that woman was the
mother of the youth who had won her heart. Okoya had told her a great
deal about his mother,--how good she was and how content she was to see
him and her become one. The girl was anxious to know his mother, but a