A mysterious silence fell suddenly.  They all saw what had happened.  There could be no mistake.  The rackets parted at the propitious moment to receive the ball.  The netting closed about it.  And then, as if it had met with no impediment whatever, the ball passed through the stanch web of thongs and over the poles, and falling to the ground counted one for Niowee.

The spectators from that town in their astonishment forgot to shout.  The onrushing crowd of players, bearing down upon Amoyah, having intended to force him to drop the ball, which he had seemed predestined to catch, or to throw it so ill as to deliver it into the power of Niowee still to secure the point, could not arrest their own momentum, and went over the startled and dumfounded player in a swift dash, leaving him prone upon the ground.  He was on his feet in an instant, his physical faculties rallying promptly, but so bewildered and doubtful that he had but one definite mental process, the resolve to regain for Ioco the point he had so mysteriously lost.  Twice afterward his fine playing focused the attention of the crowd.  Twice their plaudits of his skill rang through the vibrating air.  Then the ball, hardly checked by the web of his racket, passed through the ball-sticks, and all realized their bewitchment.

Amoyah heard the gossip afloat concerning the matter before he had well quitted the course.  The Great Bear had torn the net of the ball-sticks with his claw, one brave was telling another as he passed, because Amoyah had unveraciously boasted that he had walked by invitation in the procession of the bears during their annual march with their shadows at their hidden mysterious town in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Amoyah paused, tired, excited, panting, and critically examined the web.  Surely enough the interlacing thongs had parted in twain in two straight lines, invisible save on close inspection, as deftly and as evenly severed as if cut with a keen knife.

It was late in the day.  The sun was now on a westering slant.  The parties of spectators were breaking up, some to journey homeward, others going into the town with friends.  The place that the crowd had occupied had that peculiarly dreary aspect characteristic of a deserted pleasure ground.  Trampled heavily it was, and the charred remnant of a fire showed black here and there; broken bits of food were scattered in places where feasting had been; a great gourd that had held some gallons of water lay shattered on the ground at his feet; a group at a distance were doubtfully retracing their steps, searching for something they had lost; at the farthest limits a wolf like a dog, or a dog like a wolf, was gnawing at a bone, and snarling as he gnawed.  It was all frowzy, jaded, forlorn.