he meaning of it. It was well that the prayer had
the music of gladness.

"Yes, I come early," she said. "I come to see you. The time is here."

"The time?"

"The time when I go. Always we have known it would be some day. The
day is near. I take my son and go to his people."

"My daughter:--his people he does not know."

"My father:--no one but the winds have told him--yet he knows much! He
has said to me the things by which I feel that he knows unseen things.
I told him long ago that the stars as they touch the far mesa in the
night are like the fires our people build to light our god back from
the south. Yesterday he tells me he wants to be the builder of that
fire and serve that god. My father in this strange land:--my son
belongs to the clan whose duty it is to guard that fire! I never told
him. Those Above have told him. I have waited for a sign. The gods
have sent it to me through my son--we are to go across the desert and
find our people."

"It is a thing for council," decided her host. "The way is far to the
big river,--it is not good that you go alone. Men of Ah-ko will come
when they hear us stamp the foot for the time of the gathering of the
snakes. When they come, we will make a talk. If it is good that you
go, you will find brothers who will show the trail."

"That is well;" and Mo-wa-the arose, and stood before him. "You have
been my brother, and you have been my father, and my son shall stay
and see once more the rain ceremony of the Blue Flute people, and of
the Snake people, and when he goes to his own land, he can tell them
of the great rain magic of the Hopi Priests."

"He can do more than that," said the Ancient. "In council it has been
spoken. Your son can be one of us, and the men of the Snake Order will
be as brothers to him if ever he comes back to the mesa where the Sun
Father and the Moon Mother first looked on his face. In the days of
the Lost Others, all the people had Snake Power, as they had power of
silent speech with all the birds, and the four-foot brothers of the
forests. Only a few have not lost it, and the Trues send all their
Spirit People to work with that few. Your son may take back to your
people the faith they knew in the ancient days."

[Illustration: THE PRAYER TOKEN _Page 13_]

So it was that the boy watched the drama of the Flute people from the
mesa edge for the last time. The circle of praying priests at the
sacred well; virgins in white garments facing the path