issued from
her lips, and the aged, distrusted seer was no more.

The young woman, on seeing this, broke out into bitter wailing, swaying
slowly forward and backward, while her husband sat with his head bowed
on his knees. Their first thought was of utter bereavement, for to these
two lonely ones, and especially to the woman, the grandparent had been
not only the sole member of their tribe they had known for years, but
she had proved to them a help, at times through her singular gift. On
several occasions, in seasons of little game, had she told the man in
which direction, to go for the best results. Once, at her instance, they
had migrated to a distant spring she had known in her youth, where the
three were safe from the murderous designs of the warlike tribe coming
to their country from the north.

Finally the man bethought himself of the last behest of the dead woman.
"I go to the village, Mota," he said hoarsely, and without another word
left the hut and set off down the hill.

The woman moved not, but remained as before, near the bed of her
grandmother. There she sat, on the earthen floor, without taking her
eyes from the face of the dead, until her husband returned, nearly three
hours later.

"It was no use," he exclaimed sadly, "they would not listen, but told me
to go back and bury the grandmother; they would not come with me."

Mota replied not.

That night, as the sun was setting, the two lone creatures made a grave
on the hill a few feet from the hut, and there they buried the mortal
remains of the old Indian woman. It was a sad, silent rite; both felt
deeply the absence of all their friends and kindred; the lack of all
the customary wailing proper to the solemn service of burial; but, above
all, the want of belief in the dead woman's prophecy. That gave the
poignant touch to their sorrow. Sadly and silently, as they had buried
the dead, they returned to their hut in the gathering shades of night.

The next morning, these two bereaved ones, packing up their few simple
belongings, stole sorrowfully away from their home. They knew not what
was before them, scarcely anything of the country whither they were
bound; but such was their faith in the dead woman's word, that they did
not falter in their resolution to fulfill her admonition.

The hut, and all belonging to it, is long passed away; and the spring,
also, has disappeared, drying up till merely a stony furrow in the
ground shows where it once had i