d ceremonies. If any part of the
ritual was omitted, if a drop or a morsel were spilled, the whole rite
had to be done over again from the beginning. This was not all. The
chief medicine-man took a small portion of the meat in a long spoon, and
entered the sepulchral cavern. In the dim light he approached one of the
watchers of the dead, danced before him, uttered a mysterious formula of
words, and made a shot at the hungry man's mouth with a long spoon. If
the shot was straight, if the spoon did not touch the lips or nose or
mouth, the watcher made ready to receive a fresh spoonful. But if the
attempt failed, if the spoon did not go straight to the mark, the
mourners were obliged to wait till all the cooking ceremonies were
performed afresh, when the feeding began again.

Now, Why-why was a mourner whom the chief medicine-man was anxious to
"spite," as children say, and at the end of three days' watching our hero
had not received a morsel of food. The spoon had invariably chanced to
miss him. On the fourth night Why-Why entertained his fellow-watchers
with a harangue on the imbecility of the whole proceeding. He walked out
of the cave, kicked the chief medicine-man into a ravine, seized the pot
full of meat, brought it back with him, and made a hearty meal. The
other mourners, half dead with fear, expected to see the corpse they were
"waking" arise, "girn," and take some horrible revenge. Nothing of the
sort occurred, and the burials of the cave dwellers gradually came to be
managed in a less irksome way.

THE LOVES OF VERVA AND WHY-WHY.

No man, however intrepid, can offend with impunity the most sacred laws
of society. Why-Why proved no exception to this rule. His decline and
fall date, we may almost say, from the hour when he bought a fair-haired,
blue-eyed female child from a member of a tribe that had wandered out of
the far north. The tribe were about to cook poor little Verva because
her mother was dead, and she seemed a bouche inutile. For the price of a
pair of shell fish-hooks, a bone dagger, and a bundle of grass-string Why-
Why (who had a tender heart) ransomed the child. In the cave she lived
an unhappy life, as the other children maltreated and tortured her in the
manner peculiar to pitiless infancy.

Such protection as a man can give to a child the unlucky little girl
received from Why-Why. The cave people, like most savages, made it a
rule never to punish their children. Why-W