shoot, and then with his instrument
carefully removed the bark strips.

He placed the pieces of bark in bundles, in which shape the cinnamon
was to stay for a while, that it might ferment, so that the outer
skin and the under green portion might be more easily scraped away
by Comale with a curved knife. After that, the inner cinnamon bark
would dry and draw up, till the pieces looked like quills. But ever,
as Comale worked this day, something inly disturbed his thoughts. He
was very unhappy.

"Comale," warned his father sharply, "that was a bad cut! Be more
careful!"

Comale's father was attending to some bark that had dried to quills.
He was putting small cinnamon quills into larger ones, till he made
a collection about forty inches long. Then he would bind the
cinnamon into bundles by pieces of split bamboo. But Comale's father
kept an eye on his son's work, also.

Comale was much abashed at his father's reproof. For a time the lad
kept his mind upon the cinnamon. Then his thoughts went back to
their old uncomfortable vein, for he found in a tree a little bundle
of sticks from four to six inches long, all the sticks placed
lengthwise, the whole looking like a small bunch of firewood. Comale
knew what this bundle was, well enough, for many a time he had found
this kind of a nest of the larva of a moth. He knew it was lined
with fine spun silk, and that the heathen people said that the moth
used once to be a real person who stole wood, and who, having died,
came back to earth again in the form of a moth, condemned, for the
former theft, to make little bunches of firewood. Comale sighed as
he touched the little bundle hanging from the tree.

He thought of the "good" butterflies that he had that morning seen
going on "pilgrimage."

"Some people are good, and some people are bad," thought Comale
sadly. "The butterflies go on pilgrimage, but the bad moth's little
bundle of firewood hangs in the tree. I wish I did not always do
something bad!"

Ordinarily he would not have cared for the acts of either moth or
butterfly, but to-day there was in Comale's heart a sense of guilt
that found accusation from unwonted sources.

"Comale!" warned his father again, "another false cut!"

Tears of mortification sprang to the lad's eyes. Never had ha seemed
to himself to be so awkward a peeler. It was something beside
awkwardness that ailed Comale's hand to-day. He was worrying over
the possible consequences of a deed of his