an ancient province with ceremonies
complicated as any of ancient Hebrew or Greek tradition. Each little
toddler of the clan put forth a baby hand to touch the head of Ysobel
in sign of welcome, and one woman came whose brow was marked with
pinyon gum--and he was told that the sign was that of maternity;--all
who were to be mothers must wear a prayer symbol to the Maiden Mother
of the god who was born of a dream in the shadow of the pinyon tree!

"Do I myself dream while wide awake, or do I hear this thing?" he
demanded of Jose, in sore distress to divide the false from the true,
and impress the last on those well satisfied minds. "Is it miracles as
well as sorcery their misled magicians make jugglery of? When did this
thing happen of which the shameless wenches parade the symbol?"

Yahn asked of an aged Te-hua man the question, and the man squatted in
the sun and began ceremoniously:

"_Han-na-di Set-en-dah-nh!_ It was in the ancient day when the people
yet abode in the cliff dwellings of the high land. It was the time of
the year when the stars danced for the snow, and as the time of the
Maid-Mother came close, the sun hid his face a little more each day,
and the longest night of all the nights in the year was the time of
that birth of the god Po-se-yemo. The sun went away on the south trail
and would not look on the earth until the god-child was born, for the
Maid-Mother was much troubled, and the sun was sad because of her
trouble. That is how it was, and each year the people remember that
time, and make ready for the twilight trail if the god in the sun
should not come again from the south,--but each time the sun god
listens to the prayers and comes back and all are very glad.
_Han-na-di Set-en-dah-nh!_"

Maestro Diego seated himself in a disconsolate mood at this artifice
of Satan thus to engraft heathen rubbish on the childish minds of the
natives:--for that they did lean on that faith the mark of the pinyon
symbol was a witness before his eyes! It was a thing to dishearten
even a true believer, and he feared much that Padre Vicente passed
over many signs of the devil worship each hour--not realizing that it
must be dug out, root and branch, ere the planting of the cross would
mean aught but the Ways of the Four Winds to these brown builders of
stone and mortar, and weavers of many clothes!

Juan Gonzalvo found him there disconsolate.

"Not any wondrous thing of the Blessed Twelve can you recite to the
ani