ere. Yet he
saved a few stars by grasping the neck of the sack, and sat there,
frightened and sad, when Utset, the First Mother, asked what he had done
with the beautiful Star People.

The Sky-father himself, in those early years of the New-making, spread
out his hand with the palm downward, and into all the wrinkles of his
hand set the semblance of shining yellow corn-grains, gleaming like
sparks of fire in the dark of the early World-dawn. "See," said
Sky-father to Earth-mother, "our children shall be guided by these when
the Sun-father is not near and thy mountain terraces are as darkness
itself. Then shall our children be guided by light." So Sky-father
created the stars. Then he said, "And even as these grains gleam upward
from the water, so shall seed grain like them spring up from the earth
when touched by water, to nourish our children." And he created the
golden Seed-stuff of the corn.

It is around the beautiful Corn Maidens that perhaps the most delicate
of all imagery clings, Maidens offended when the dancers sought their
presence all too freely, no longer holding them so precious as in the
olden time, so that, in white garments, they became invisible in the
thickening white mists. Then sadly and noiselessly they stole in amongst
the people and laid their corn wands down amongst the trays, and laid
their white broidered garments thereon, as mothers lay soft kilting over
their babes. Even as the mists became they, and with the mists drifting,
fled away, to the south Summer-land.

They began the search for the Corn Maidens, found at last only by
Paiyatuma, the god of dawn, from whose flute came wonderful music, as of
liquid voices in caverns, or the echo of women's laughter in water
vases, heard only by men of nights as they wandered up and down the
river trail.

When he paused to rest on his journey, playing on his painted flute,
butterflies and birds sought him, and he sent them before to seek the
Maidens, even before they could hear the music of his song-sound. And
the Maidens filled their colored trays with seed-corn from their fields,
and over all spread broidered mantles, broidered with the bright colors
and the creature signs of the Summer-land, and thus following him,
journeyed only at night and dawn, as the dead do, and the stars also.

Back to the Seed People they came, but only to give to the ancients the
precious seed, and this having been given, the darkness of night fell
around them. As sh