rew sacred white pollen to the four ways, and the
feeling that he was as guardian to the maid whose very name had been a
part of his boy dreams, was a sweet thought.

It was a wonderful thing that out of the dreams she had grown real,
and had covered the trails until she had reached him! It was sweet
that his hand had touched her and told him that the maid was a real
maid of pulsing heart and tremulous breath.

But with all the sweetness of it, there was a strange thought
fluttering over his mind like a moth or a butterfly. It did not find
lodgment there, but it did not go quite away, and ere he offered to
her the meat roasted in the red coals of the pinyon wood, he scattered
prayer pollen between them as on a shrine.

The line of the white between them was as the threshold of a door over
which a man may not step. No man crosses threshold of another if the
wife of that man is alone there,--and no brother goes into the house
where his sister is without other companion. This was the law from the
time of the ancient days, and belongs to many tribes.

To the Navahu it did not belong, and the maid knew only that the white
pollen meant prayer, and that she was circled by sacred things, and by
thought so sweet that her eyes rested on the sands when he gazed at
her.

So sweet did the thought grow that they no longer tried to speak as
at first, and compare words Navahu, and words Te-hua;--her own
forgotten tongue.

To whisper "K[=a]-ye-povi" was sweet, but to think "Doli" was
sweeter--for it had been the vision of the goddess of the blue he had
first seen in the pool of the hills;--and to him had come her symbol
dancing on the ripples. He wore it in the banda about his head;--and
he knew now that the image of her would never grow faint in his heart.
Out of the hand of the Great Mystery had she come to him that the last
and best gift of life should be known, and that the prayers to the
gods be double strong because of that knowing.

Without daring to look at her he sat in silence and thought these
things, and he felt that she must know what the thoughts were. The war
of the elements was as a background for strange harmonies, and the low
roaring clouds of darkness were but a blanket of mist under which the
fire glow of two hearts be felt to shine near and clear, and send to
each its signal.

Then--like a monster let loose, there were broken all bonds of the
tornado on the river hills. A blackness as of night covered the