herhood against the
strongest enemy they or their fathers had ever met--was a thing beyond
his strength.

They had chosen to be blind, and for the blind, no one can see!

Standing on the terrace, the governor spoke alone to Tahn-te of the
thing which the men of iron sought--it was the same thing Alvarado
had asked of when he had come north from Coronado's camp. It was
strange that the sign of the Sun Father was a thing the white men
sought ever to carry from the land. It must be strong medicine and
very precious to them!

It was not possible for Tahn-te to make clear that the virtue of the
yellow metal was not a sacred thing--only a thing of barter as shell
beads or robes might be.

"Is it as they say,"--said his host after a smoke of silence--"is it
as they say that the Order of the Snake is again made strong by you in
Povi-whah?"

"It is true," said Tahn-te. "The help I have is not much. The Great
Snake they all revere for the sacred reasons, but only the very old
men know that with the Ancients the medicine of the wild brother
snakes was strong medicine for the hearts of men. Maybe I can live
long enough to teach the young men that the strong medicine is yet
ours, and that the wild brother snake can always help us prove to the
gods that it is ours."

"It is true that it is ours," assented the old man,--"and it is good
when the visions come to show us how it is ours,"--then after a
little, he added:--"For the sleep you will stay with my clan?" but
Tahn-te, standing on the terrace, shook his head and pointed to the
south.

"Thanks that you wish me," he said,--"but the work is there and the
watching is there. When the smoke is over--I ask for your prayers
and--I go!"

Steadily he ran on the trail past the thickets of the rose, and the
great rock by the trail--steadily under the stars a long way. Then out
of the many small night sounds of the wilderness he heard behind him
the long call of a night bird in flight. Only a little ways did he go
when again that little song of three descending notes came to him. It
was very close this time, but he neither halted nor made more haste.
For all the heed given it he might not have hearkened to it more than
to the cricket in the grass.

Yet it spoke clearly to his ears. He knew that sentinels had been
placed along his trail, and as he ran steadily, and alone, past each,
he knew that the watchers were keen of eye and ear, and that the last
two sent each other the signa