ow mist cleared from before the eyes of Why-Why he found
himself (he was doubtless the first hero of the many heroes who have
occupied this romantic position) stretched on a grassy bed, and watched
by the blue eyes of Verva. Where were the sand, the stream, the hostile
warrior, the crowds of friends and foes? It was Verva's part to explain.
The champion of the other tribe had never breathed after he received the
club-thrust, and the chief medicine-man had declared that Why-Why was
also dead. He had suggested that both champions should be burned in the
desolate spot where they lay, that their boilyas, or ghosts, might not
harm the tribes. The lookers-on had gone to their several and distant
caves to fetch fire for the ceremony (they possessed no means of striking
a light), and Verva, unnoticed, had lingered beside Why-Why, and laid his
bleeding head in her lap. Why-Why had uttered a groan, and the brave
girl dragged him from the field into a safe retreat among the woods not
far from the stream. Why-Why had been principally beaten about the head,
and his injuries, therefore, were slight.

After watching the return of the tribesmen, and hearing the chief
medicine-man explain that Why-Why's body had been carried away by "the
bad black-fellow with a tail who lives under the earth," Why-Why enjoyed
the pleasure of seeing his kinsmen and his foes leave the place to its
natural silence. Then he found words, and poured forth his heart to
Verva. They must never be sundered--they must be man and wife! The girl
leaned her golden head on Why-Why's dark shoulder, and sniffed at him,
for kissing was an institution not yet evolved. She wept. She had a
dreadful thing to tell him,--that she could never be his. "Look at this
mark," she said, exposing the inner side of her arm. Why-Why looked,
shuddered, and turned pale. On Verva's arm he recognized, almost
defaced, the same tattooed badge that wound its sinuous spirals across
his own broad chest and round his manly legs. _It was the mark of the
Serpent_!

Both were Serpents; both, unknown to Why-Why, though not to Verva, bore
the same name, the same badge, and, if Why-Why had been a religious man,
both would have worshipped the same reptile. Marriage between them then
was a thing accursed; man punished it by death. Why-Why bent his head
and thought. He remembered all his youth--the murder of his sister for
no crime; the killing of the serpent, and how no evil came of it;