as unheard-of boldness to question Secotan's words,
yet the boy could not keep his hot protests to himself.

"But is it not wrong to pretend to fear what we do not?" he objected.
"Do the spirits of the water actually rise up and tell you that we
must keep to the shore? I do not believe it, although my grandmother
says so until my ears ring again."

Secotan turned his head quickly, as though to hide the ghost of a
smile.

"The voices of the wind and the breakers and of the thunder all cry
the same message," he declared, "and wise men have learned that it
warns them to hug the land. You must heed your grandmother, even
though her words are shrill and often repeated."

He would say no more, so Nashola went away, pondering his answer as
he walked down the hill. After all, no harm had come to him from
entering the medicine man's presence unbidden, as his comrades had all
said. He answered their questions very shortly as they came crowding
about him, and to the persistent queries of his grandmother he would
say nothing at all. Yet the others noticed that his canoe lay unused
in the shelter of a rock on the sandy beach where he had left it, and
that he swam in the sea no more.

The days passed, the hot, quiet summer passing with them. One evening,
as they all sat about the camp fire, one of the older warriors said
quietly:

"The time is near when our medicine man must go from us."

"Why?" questioned Nashola's grandmother, while the boy turned quickly
to hear.

"He has not sat upon the hill nor before the door of his lodge for
three days, and the venison and corn we have carried to him have lain
untouched for all that time. One of us who ventured close heard a cry
from within and groaning. It may be that he must die."

"But will no one help him?" cried Nashola. It was not proper that a
boy should speak out in the presence of the older warriors, but he
could not keep his wonder to himself.

"There is danger to common folk in passing too close to the medicine
man's lodge," his grandmother explained quickly. "There are spirits
within who are his friends but who might destroy us. And when he is
ill unto death and the beings from another world have come to bear his
soul away, then must no man go near."

"Sometimes a medicine man has a companion to whom he teaches his
wisdom and who takes his place when he is gone," said the man by the
fire. "But even that comrade flees away when death is at hand and the
spirits begin