of a soon-to-be
maternity--the sacred sign of the pinyon gum seen by Ho-tiwa when he
went as a boy for the seed corn to the distant Te-hua people by the
river of the east.

"I come here with prayer thoughts to the water," said the old man
noting their reluctance,--"and I find a work put by my feet. The
reader of the skies tells that a change is to come with the moon. It
is as the moon comes that I find her. The gods may not be glad with us
if our hearts are not good at this time."

"But the corn--"

"The corn I would eat can go to this girl for four days. I am old, but
for so long I will fast,--and maybe then the gods will send the
change."

So the girl was carried to his house, and the women shrank away, and
were afraid--for the clouds followed the wind swiftly from the south,
and the face of the moon was covered, and at the turn of the night was
heard the voice of a man child--new born of the strange girl found by
the well in the moonlight. Ho-tiwa in the outer room of the dwelling
heard the voice--and more than the child voice, for on the breath of
the wind across the desert the good rain came walking in beauty to the
fields, and the glad laughter of the people went up from the mesa, and
there was much patter of bare feet on the wet stone floor of the
heights--and glad calls of joy that the desert was to live again!

And within the room of the new birth the women stared in affright at
the child and at each other, for it was most wonderfully fair--not
like any child ever seen. This child had hair like the night, eyes
like the blue of the sky, and face like the dawn.

One man among them was very old, and in his youth had known the Te-hua
words. When the girl spoke he listened, and told the thing she said,
and the women shrank from her when it was told.

"She must be a medicine-woman, for she knows these things," she said,
"and these things are sacred to her people. She says that the blade of
a sacrifice must mark her child, for the boy will not be a child as
other children." And at the mention of the knife the people stared at
each other.

"There is such a knife," said Ho-tiwa. "It belongs to the Ancient
Days, and only the gods, and two men know it. It shall be as she says.
The god of the sky has brought the woman and has brought the child,
and on the face of the child is set the light of the moon that the
Hopi people will never again doubt that the gods can do these
things."

And there was a council at w