ch
are common in these latitudes, namely maize and sundry varieties of
Kaffir corn, having no knowledge of wheat and the other hardy cereals.
Therefore, it is all important to them that the corn should have a fair
start, for if the autumn frosts catch it before it is fit to harvest the
great proportion of the crop turns black and is rendered useless.

These agricultural details had no small bearing upon the fate of our
adventurers. The feast of Jal was celebrated in order to secure a
good seed-bed and springing time for the grain. Juanna and Otter had
abolished the hideous ceremonies of that feast, and the People of the
Mist watched for the results with a gloomy and superstitious eye. If the
season proved more than ordinarily good, all might go well, but if it
chanced to be bad----!

And, as was to be expected, seeing how much depended upon it, this
spring proved the very worst which any living man could remember in that
country. Day after day the face of the sun was hidden with mists that
only yielded to the bitter winds which blew from the mountains at night,
so that when the spring should have been a month old, the temperature
was still that of mid-winter and the corn would not start at all.

Leonard and Juanna soon discovered what this meant for them, and never
was the aspect of weather more anxiously scanned than by these two from
day to day. In vain; every morning the blanket of cold mist fell like a
cloud, blotting out the background of the mountains, and every night the
biting wind swept down upon them from the fields of snow, chilling them
to the marrow.

This state of things--wretched enough it itself--was only one of many
miseries which afflicted them. Otter and Juanna were still treated
as gods indeed, and considerable respect was shown to Leonard and
Francisco, that is, within the walls of the palace. But if, wearied with
the monotony of their life, they went out, which they did twice only
during these five dreadful weeks, matters were different. Then they
found themselves followed by a mob of men, women, and children, who
glared at them ferociously and cursed them aloud, asking what they had
their gods had done with the sunshine.

On the second occasion indeed they were forced to fly for their lives,
and after this they gave up making the attempt to walk abroad, and sat
in the palace with Juanna and Otter, who of course never dared to leave
it.

It was a terrible life; there was nothing to do, nothi