give me to you?" he persisted. "Old Mowa says I am white
because the moon brought me."

"It is ill luck to talk with that woman--she has the witch charm."

"When I am Ruler, the witches must live in the old dead cities if you
do not like them."

Mo-wa-the smiled at that.

"Yes, when you are Ruler. How will you make that happen?"

"All these days I have been thinking the thoughts how. If the moon
brought me to you, that means that my father was not like others;--not
like mesa men."

"No--not like mesa men!" she breathed softly.

Mo-wa-the was very pretty and very slender. Tahn-te was always sure no
other mother was so pretty,--and as she spoke now her dark eyes were
beautified by some memory,--and the boy saw that he was momentarily
forgotten in some dream of her own.

"No one but me shall gather the wood for the night fire to light
Po-se-yemo back from the south lands," he said as he rose to his feet
and stood straight and decided before his mother. "The moon will help
me, and your white god will help me, and when he sees the blaze and
comes back, you will tell him it was his son who kept the fire!"

He took from his girdle the downy feather of an eagle, stepped
outside to the edge of the mesa and with a breath sent it beyond him
into space. A current of air caught it and whirled it upwards in token
that the prayer was accepted by Those Above.

And inside the doorway, Mo-wa-the, watching, let fall the medicine
bowl at this added evidence that an enchanted day had come to the life
of her son. Not anything he wanted to see could be hidden from him
this day! Powerless, she knelt with bent head over the fragments of
the sacred vessel--powerless against the gods who veil things--and who
unveil things!

It was the next morning that Mo-wa-the stood at the door of Ho-tiwa
the Ancient one;--the spiritual head of the village.

"Come within," he said, and she passed his daughters who were grinding
corn between the stones, and singing the grinding song of the sunrise
hour. They smiled at her as she passed, but with the smile was a
deference they did not show the ordinary neighbor of the mesas in Hopi
land.

The old man motioned her to a seat, and in silence they were in the
prayer which belongs to Those Above when human things need counsel.

Through the prayer thoughts echoed the last thrilling notes of the
grinding songs at the triumph of the sun over the clouds of the dusk
and the night.

Mo-wa-the smiled at t