his now and arose in some dismay. He lay back upon
his pillow, smiling.

"Not very agreeable, is it, Nance? Well, come again, and I'll tell you
about some of the pleasanter old faiths next time--I remember now that
they interested me a lot before I was sick."

"You're sure I shouldn't send Clytie or some one?" She looked down at him
anxiously, putting her hand on his forehead. He put one of his own lightly
over hers.

"No, no, thank you! It's not near time yet for the next baked potato. If
Clytie doesn't give up the skin of this one I shall be tempted to forget
that she's a woman. There, I hear grandad coming, so you won't be leaving
me alone."

Grandfather Delcher came in cheerily as Nancy left the room.

"Resting, my boy? That's good. You look brighter already--Nancy must come
often."

He took Nancy's chair by the couch and began the reading of his morning's
mail. Bernal lay still with eyes closed during the reading of several
letters; but when the old man opened out a newspaper with little rustlings
and pats, he turned to him.

"Well, my boy?"

"I've been thinking of something funny. You know, my memory is still
freakish, and things come back in splotches. Just now I was recalling a
primitive Brazilian tribe in whose language the word 'we' means also
'good. 'Others,' which they express by saying 'not we,' means also
'evil.' Isn't that a funny trait of early man--we--good; not we--bad! I
suppose our own tongue is but an elaboration of that simple bit of human
nature--a training of polite vines and flowering shrubs over the crude
lines of it.

"And this tribe--the Bakairi, it is called--is equally crude in its
religion. It is true, sir, is it not, that the most degraded of the
savages tribes resort to human sacrifice in their religious rites?"

"Generally true. Human sacrifice was practised even by some who were well
advanced, like the Aztecs and Peruvians."

"Well, sir, this Bakairi tribe believed that its god demanded a sacrifice
yearly, and their priests taught them that a certain one of their number
had been sent by their god for this sacrifice each year; that only by
butchering this particular member of the tribe and--incredible as it
sounds--eating his body and drinking his blood, could they avert drouth
and pestilence and secure favours for the year to come. I remember the
historian intimated that it were well not to incur the displeasure of any
priest; that one doing this might find it followed by