che had seen them, but Indian
traders of feathers had said it was so.

The men smoked in silence and then one said:--"Even if it be so, could
the girl come alone so far through the country of the hostile
people?"

"There is High Magic to help sometimes," reminded the old chief. "When
magic has been used only for sacred things it can do all things! We
can ask if she has known a white god such as the trader told of to our
enemies."

And the two oldest men went to the house of Ho-tiwa's wife, and stood
by the couch of the girl, and they sprinkled sacred meal, and sat in
prayer before they spoke.

And the girl said, "My name is Mo-wa-the (Flash Of Light) and the name
of my son is Tahn-te (Sunlight). We may stay while these seeds grow
into grain, and into trees, and bear harvest. But not always may we be
with you, for a God of the Sky may claim his son."

And she took three seeds from the fold of the girdle she had worn.
They were strange seeds of another land.

The old men looked at each other, and remembered that to the mother of
the Te-hua god, strange seeds had been given, and they trembled, and
the man of the Te-hau words spoke:

"You come from the south where strange things may happen. On the trail
of that south, heard you or saw you--the white god?"

And she drew the child close, and looked in its face, and said,
"Yes--a white god!--the God of the Great Star."

And the old men sprinkled the sacred meal to the six points, and told
the council, and no one was allowed to question Mo-wa-the ever again.

The seeds were planted near the well of Sik-yat-ki, and grew there.
One was the tree of the peach, another of the yellow pear, and the
grain was a grain of the wheat. The pear tree and the wheat could not
grow well in the sands of the desert, only enough to bring seed again,
but the peach grew in the shadow of the mesa, and the people had great
joy in it, and only the men of the council knew they came from the
gods.

And so it was in the beginning.

CHAPTER II

THE DAY OF THE SIGN

Mo-wa-the,--the mother of Tahn-te, drew with her brush of yucca fibre
the hair-like lines of black on the ceremonial bowl she was
decorating. Tahn-te, slender, and nude, watched closely the deft
manipulations of the crude tools;--the medicine bowls for the sacred
rites were things of special interest to him--for never in the
domestic arrangement of the homes of the terraces did he see them
used. He thought the serrate