ower, and the seed in the ground could not grow.

In the one town of Walpi there were those who regretted the seed
wasted in the planting,--it were better to have given it to the
children, and even yet they might find some of it if the sand was
searched carefully.

"Peace!" said old Ho-tiwa, the Ancient of the village, and the chief
of Things of the Spirit. "It is not yet so bad as when I was a boy. In
that starving time, the robes of rabbit skins were eaten when the corn
was gone. Yet you see we did live and have grown old! The good seed is
in the ground, and when the rain comes--"

"When it comes!" sighed one skeptic--"We wait one year now,--how many
more until we die?"

"If it is that you die--the rain or the no rain makes no change--you
die!" reminded the old man. "The reader of the stars and of the moon
says a change is to come. Tell the herald to call it from the
housetops. This night the moon is at the big circle--it may bring with
it the smile of the glad god again. Tell the people!"

And as the herald proclaimed at the sunset the hopeful words of the
priests who prayed in the kivas, old Ho-tiwa walked away from the
spirit of discontent, and down the trail to the ruins of Sik-yat-ki.
All the wells but that one of the ancient city were useless, green,
stagnant water now. And each day it was watched lest it also go back
into the sands, and at the shrine beside it many prayers were
planted.

So that was the place where he went for prayer when his heart was
heavy with the woe of his people. And that was how he found that which
was waiting there to be found.

It was a girl, and she looked dead as she lay by the stones of the old
well. As he bent over to see if she lived, the round moon came like a
second sun into the soft glow of the twilight, and as it touched the
face of the girl, the old man felt the wind of the south pass over
them. Always to the day he died did he tell of how that south wind
came as if from swift wings!

[Illustration: THE ONE TOWN OF WALPI _Page 1_]

He called to some men who were going home from rabbit hunting in the
dusk, and they came and looked at the girl and at each other, and drew
away.

"We have our own women who may die soon," they said: "Why take in a
stranger? Whence comes she?"

No one had seen her come, but her trail was from the south. She wore
the dress of a pueblo girl, but she was not of their people. Her hair
was not cut, yet on her forehead she carried the mark