lectric, so use it. Eat
till it's all, _Maan_; there's more back."

Yonnie bumped against Aaron's eating-elbow. "No man and his wife have
eaten in such a zoo since Noah and his wife left the ark," Aaron said.
He cut a slice of Schnitz-pie and palmed it against the bull's big snout
to be snuffled up. "He likes your cooking," he said.

"So wash his face," Martha told him.

* * * * *

Outside the tent there was a clatter of horse-iron on frozen ground.
"What the die-hinker is that?" Aaron demanded. He stood and picked up
the naphtha lantern.

Outside, Aaron saw a tall black stranger, astride a horse as pale as the
little Murnan moons that lighted him. "_Rankeshi dade!_" the visitor
bellowed.

"May your life be a long one!" Aaron Stoltzfoos repeated in Hausa.
Observing that his caller was brandishing a clenched fist, the Amishman
observed the same ambiguous courtesy. "If you will enter, O Welcome
Stranger, my house will be honored."

[Illustration]

"Mother bless thee, Bearded One," the Murnan said. He dismounted,
tossing his reins to one of the four retainers who remained on
horseback. He entered the tent after Aaron; and stared about him at the
animals, letting his dark eyes flick across Martha's unveiled face. At
the Amishman's invitation, the visitor sat himself on a tobacco case,
revealing as he crossed his legs elaborately embroidered trousers and
boot tops worked with designs that would dazzle a Texan. Martha bustled
about hiding the remains of their meal.

The Murnan's outer dress was a woolen _riga_, the neckless gown of his
West-African forefathers, with a blanket draped about his shoulders,
exactly as those ancestors had worn one in the season of the cold wind
called harmattan. Aaron introduced himself as Haruna, the Hausa version
of his name; and the guest made himself known as Sarki--Chief--of the
village of Datura. His given name was Kazunzumi. Wutzchen snuffled in
his sleep. The Sarki glanced at the huge pig and smiled. Aaron relaxed a
bit. The Islamic interdict on swine had been shed by the Murnans when
they'd become apostates, just as Colonial Survey had guessed.

Stoltzfoos' Hausa, learned at the Homestead School at Georgetown
University, proved adequate to its first challenge in the field, though
he discovered, with every experimenter in a new language, that his most
useful phrase was _magana sanoo-sanoo_: "please speak slowly." Aaron let
the Chief commence the