ese live
everywhere where Tzitz is running or standing. In this uashtanyi we keep
meal in order to do sacrifice at the time when rain ought to fall. The
pictures of the Shiuana call the Shiuana themselves! So you see what the
Koshare want with this thing."

Okoya's lips had slowly parted in growing astonishment; and Mitsha, to
whom the explanation was not altogether new, watched the expression of
his features with genuine delight.

"And when you pray and scatter meal out of this,"--pointing to the
bowl,--"does the rain always come?"

"Always."

"Why, then, did it not rain last summer?"

"That I cannot tell you," said the woman. "Only the Shiuana know.
Besides, there are bad people who stop the rain from coming."

"How can they do that?" cried both Okoya and Mitsha in surprise, neither
of them having heard as yet of such a thing.

"I must not tell you that," said Hannay, with a mysterious and important
air; "you are too young to know it. Tell me, Okoya,"--her voice changed
with the change of the subject,--"does Shotaye Koitza often come to see
your mother?"

This question was highly imprudent. But Hannay was often imprudent.
Smart and sly in a certain way, she was equally thoughtless in other
matters. The query so sudden, so abrupt, and so uncalled for must, she
ought to have foreseen, look extremely suspicious. And yet Okoya was on
the point of answering, "She was at our home a few days ago." In time,
however, he bethought himself of the warnings she had received, and
replied in an unsteady tone,--

"I don't know."

Hannay noticed his embarrassed manner, and saw at a glance that he was
forewarned. The "no" of the boy told her "yes." The discovery, however,
that Okoya was on his guard was rather disagreeable; it angered her so
much that her first impulse was to send him away. But she soon changed
her mind. The youth was obedient; and if now he obeyed the counsels of
his people, why might he not later on become accustomed to submission to
his wife's people also? At all events he was good-natured, and according
to Hannay's conceptions, good-natured folk were always silly. That smart
but ill-natured persons might also prove extremely silly on occasions
was far from her thoughts, and yet the very question she had imprudently
put to Okoya was an instance of it.

It did not occur to her that it might yet be problematic whether Okoya
would ever become a traitor to his own people. She could not conceive
how anybod