ciously about the circle and sending chills up and down the spines
of those he looked upon.

Hooniah waddled forward, head bent and gaze averted.

"Where be thy blankets?"

"I but stretched them up in the sun, and behold, they were not!" she
whined.

"So?"

"It was because of Di Ya."

"So?"

"Him have I beaten sore, and he shall yet be beaten, for that he
brought trouble upon us who be poor people."

"The blankets!" Klok-No-Ton bellowed hoarsely, foreseeing her desire
to lower the price to be paid. "The blankets, woman! Thy wealth is
known."

"I but stretched them up in the sun," she sniffled, "and we be poor
people and have nothing."

He stiffened suddenly, with a hideous distortion of the face, and
Hooniah shrank back. But so swiftly did he spring forward, with
in-turned eyeballs and loosened jaw, that she stumbled and fell down
grovelling at his feet. He waved his arms about, wildly flagellating
the air, his body writhing and twisting in torment. An epilepsy seemed
to come upon him. A white froth flecked his lips, and his body was
convulsed with shiverings and tremblings.

The women broke into a wailing chant, swaying backward and forward in
abandonment, while one by one the men succumbed to the excitement till
only Sime remained. He, perched upon his canoe, looked on in mockery;
yet the ancestors whose seed he bore pressed heavily upon him, and
he swore his strongest oaths that his courage might be cheered.
Klok-No-Ton was horrible to behold. He had cast off his blanket and
torn his clothes from him, so that he was quite naked, save for a
girdle of eagle-claws about his thighs. Shrieking and yelling, his
long black hair flying like a blot of night, he leaped frantically
about the circle. A certain rude rhythm characterized his frenzy, and
when all were under its sway, swinging their bodies in accord with
his and venting their cries in unison, he sat bolt upright, with arm
outstretched and long, talon-like finger extended. A low moaning, as
of the dead, greeted this, and the people cowered with shaking knees
as the dread finger passed them slowly by. For death went with it, and
life remained with those who watched it go; and being rejected, they
watched with eager intentness.

Finally, with a tremendous cry, the fateful finger rested upon La-lah.
He shook like an aspen, seeing himself already dead, his household
goods divided, and his widow married to his brother. He strove to
speak, to deny, but hi