from any jewel of earth, Tahn-te thought
she would look like this spirit of the forest stream. Even while held
by the wonder and the beauty of the vision, he thought of this, and
recalled the bluebird feathers in the prayer plumes of Tusayan:--next
to the eagle they were sacred feathers:--the gods were sending him
strong thoughts for magic!

Suddenly the maid stood tense and erect as though listening--or was
it only the nearness of a mortal by which she was thrilled to
movement?--for she clasped the trailing white skin to her breast, and
stepped into the deeper shadow where grew the fragrant thickets of
the young pine under the arms of the great pine mothers.

Without sound she moved. His eyes watched in strained eagerness for
the one turn of the head, or one look of the eyes towards him, but
that was not to be. To mortal all the joys cannot be given at one
time--else all would be as gods!

He stared at the shadows into which she had blended herself, and he
stared at the pool from which she had arisen. It was again a mirror
reflecting only the coming day. Yet his heart leaped as he saw a sign
left there for him!

Drifting idly there in a circle was a bit of blue too vivid for the
echo of the sky of dawn--it was the wing of a bluebird, and even as he
looked, it was caught in an eddy more swift, and moved on the surface
of the water straight to the edge of the bank nearest his place of
rest.

Staggering to his feet, he went to meet it. It was not an empty vision
as the maid had been, and it did not fade as he grasped it. The
visions of the night had been strong visions, but with the dawn had
come to Tahn-te the added medicine of the second gift of the Spirits
of the Air. Above the clouds must his thoughts be in their height. The
medicine of the eagle had made that plain to him, and the feathers of
prayer lay in his hand as a sign such as had come to no other man!

The Brothers of the Air were plainly to be his kindred!

This was the dawning of the fifth day on the prayer trail. A little
way he walked, and the world reeled about him,--to escape from the
cloud of weakness he ran the way of the brook towards the far
river--and then as a brook falls into the shadows of a cavern place,
Tahn-te fell and lay where he fell. In the darkness closing over him
he heard the rustle of wings--though another might have heard only the
whisper of the pines.

When the sun stood straight above, and the bush of the sage brooded
ove