an air-hole only admitted light and air.

If on the afternoon of the day when Shyuote had his perilous adventure
with the young people of the Corn clan, we had been able to peep into
the third one of the ground-floor caves, counting from the west end of
the group inhabited by the Water people, we should have found the
apartment empty; that is, as far as human occupancy was concerned. But
not deserted; for while its owner was not there, ample signs of his
presence only a short time before could be detected everywhere. In the
fireplace wood was smouldering, and a faint smoke rising from this found
egress through a crude chimney. This was built over the hearth, with two
vertical side slabs of pumice supporting a perforated square flag, over
which a primitive flue, made of rubble cemented by mud, led to a
circular opening in the front wall of the cave. In a corner stood the
frame for the grinding-slabs, or _metates_, and in it the three plates
of lava on which the Indian crushes and pulverizes his maize were placed
in the convenient slanting position. Not only the prismatic
crushing-pins, but freshly ground meal also, lay in the stone casings of
the primitive mill, and on these the plates themselves. Deerskins and
cotton wraps were rolled in a bundle in another corner. Others hung on a
line made of rawhide and stretched across one end of the room, fastened
to wooden pins driven into the soft rock. On the floor--to which a thick
coating of mud, washed with blood and smoothed, gave a black, glossy
appearance--there were beside, here a few stone axes with handles, there
some black sooty pots, painted bowls, and finally the inevitable
water-urn with wide body and narrow top, decorated in the usual style
with geometrical and symbolical figures painted in red and black on
whitish ground. The walls of the cave were burnished with burnt gypsum;
the ceiling was covered by a thick coat of soot; and a band of yellow
ochre, like wainscoting, ran along the base of the sides.

The owner of this troglodytic home, however, is not to be seen; but in a
side chamber, which communicates with this apartment through one of the
dark and low passages just described, a rustling sound is heard, as of
some one rummaging about in darkness. After a while a woman's head peeps
through the passage into the outer room, and little by little the whole
body emerges, forcing itself through the narrow opening. She rises and
stands erect in front of the hearth,