ail.--That slight automatic gesture in
unison proved even a sort of bond between them and the dusky old
orator;--he could plainly see that the signs in the heavens were
earnestly regarded by the white strangers. That showed they were wise
to read the true things; for that he could tell them more.

"The maid who was mother to Tahn-te is named The Woman of the
Twilight. When little, the spirit of her broke in two--and she went
into the Land of Twilight. Her parents could not believe that she
would no more walk on the earth. They went to the Po-Ahtun--they
sealed her to that order--so it was, and the medicine prayer of the
Po-Ahtun brought back the breath to her. But when a spirit goes to the
Land of the Twilight, it does not come back at once--not all at once!
The gods are strong and can do things. When they want to take her
again and teach her hidden things--they take her! One Star visitor in
the sky took her when she became woman, and hid her behind all the
hills until her child moved,--then, in the far desert where the Sun
Father is the great god, there in that place she was laid on the sands
beside a well that the child be earth child like other men. That is
how it was, and she knows why the earth child was called the child of
the Great Star, and of the Sky."

Yahn listened eagerly--and with sulky frown--Neither she or Ka-yemo
had ever before heard this account of the Woman of the Twilight and
her son. The magic of it made her feel sullenly helpless. This then
was the reason why no face smiled in scorn when Tahn-te would come
sometimes from mesa, or canyon, bearing his mother in his arms as one
would bear a little child:--all the elders knew she had been seeking
the trail to the Land of Twilight where long ago she had found a god,
and lost herself.

"And this woman tells to wise men a fable like this--and is given
their faith?" asked Padre Vicente, while Juan Gonzalvo muttered that
the savages had stolen the truth of the Mother of God, and should be
made pay dear in good time, for the sacrilege!

"The mouth of the woman was sealed," stated the narrator. "But the
wise men of the desert sent men to tell the Te-hua people of the magic
of the woman. And the years and the work of her son made good the
stories of the Hopi men."

"We have here no mere juggling pretender," remarked Padre Vicente--"a
Cacique whose mother establishes family connection with the stars in
the sky, could in truth have papal power among these