uilty of what is laid to my charge. It
is a very little thing that I ask."

So the magistrate gave her leave; and there before all the people she
sent up her kite till it flew high over the roofs of the town.
Gently the West Wind took it and blew it away towards the sea. "Oh,
Gamma-gata," she whispered softly, "hear me now, for I am not afraid."

The wind blew hard upon the kite, and pulled as though to catch it away,
so Katipah twisted the cord once or twice round her waist that she might
keep the safer hold over it. Then she said to the chief magistrate and
to all the people that were assembled: "I am innocent of all that is
charged against me; for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha herself who
killed her own child."

"Prove it!" cried the magistrate.

"I cannot," replied Katipah.

"Then you must die!" said the magistrate.

"In the second place," went on Katipah, "I did not eat my own child."

"Prove it!" cried the chief magistrate again.

"I will," said Katipah; "O Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I
ask."

Down the string of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then
larger till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and
sliding, with his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his
ankles, and handfuls of flowers which he threw into his mother's face as
he came. "Oh! cruel chief magistrate," cried Katipah, receiving the babe
in her arms, "does it seem that I have eaten him?"

"You are a witch!" said the chief magistrate, "or how do you come to
have a child that disappears and comes again from nowhere! It is not
possible to permit such things to be: you and your child shall both be
burned together!"

Katipah drew softly upon the kite-string. "Oh, Gamma-gata," she cried,
"lift me up now very high, and I will not be afraid!"

Then suddenly, before all eyes, Katipah was lifted up by the cord of the
kite which she had wound about her waist; right up from the earth she
was lifted till her feet rested above the heads of the people.

Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly through the air, out of
reach of the hands stretched up to catch her, and addressed the populace
in these words:

"Oh, cruel people, who will not believe innocence when it speaks, you
must believe me now! I am the wife of the West Wind--of Gamma-gata, the
beautiful, the bearer of fine weather, who also brings back the wings
that fly till the winter is over. Is it well, do you think, to be a