earth
with wide spread wings. With the voice of thunder it came;--and with
the strength of a god it came.

Earth and stone were hurled on the wind as if a rain of arrows or
spears had been hurled by some spirit of annihilation.

Even breath had to be fought for there,--and the maid in terror
reached out her hands to the man across the sacred barrier and moaned
pitifully, and in the darkness the man drew her close until her head
rested on his breast, and his own bent head, and his body, sheltered
her.

CHAPTER XV

THE GIVING OF THE SUN SYMBOL

Two nights had passed over the world, and the day star was shining
over the mountains of the east when the people of Povi-whah saw again
Tahn-te the Po-Ahtun-ho.

It was the sentinel on the terrace who saw him, and he was at the
ancient shrine at the mesa edge, and a flame was there to show that
prayers were being made to greet the god of the new day.

And when he came down from the mesa, and looked at the corn of the
fields torn and beaten low by the great storm, his face showed that he
carried a sad heart, and that he had gone from Te-gat-ha somewhere
into the hills for prayer.

And to his house went the old men, and they listened to that which had
been decided by the council of Te-gat-ha. A man had already arrived
from Te-gat-ha to tell them that same thing, and to tell them that an
evil spirit of the forest who spoke as a Navahu maid, had brought woe
on the valley.

Some said it was the Ancient Star calling on the voice of the wind for
sacrifice, and others said the tornado had come because the maid had
been let go with the sacred symbols of ceremony painted on her body,
and the gods of that ceremony called for her on the wind. But
whichever way was the true way, the maid was linked to spirits of
evil, and the corn of that year would be less than half of a full
year, and the Te-gat-ha men asked that any Te-hua man who found the
evil maid would send a runner to tell of it. Robes and blue beads
would be given for her:--she belonged to the god of the star, or the
god of the mad winds, and on the altar with prayers must she be given
to them, that they be not angry.

Tahn-te listened--and when they said the anger of the sky had come
from the west, as the maid had come, he was silent.

His first day of failure in council had been the day when he shielded
the Dream Maid on the trail.--The woman who had wept in Te-gat-ha had
said she was evil and a witch, and no