produces rain.”  One after the other she pointed out the various figures.  “Here you see the tadpole, here the frog, here the dragon-fly and the fish; they, as they stand here, pray for rain; for some of them cry for it, when the time comes others live in the water, which is fed from the clouds, or they flit above the pools in summer.  Here is the cloud and lightning, and”—­she turned the vessel bottom side up—­“here are the Shiuana themselves,” pointing at the two horned serpents.  “These live everywhere where Tzitz is running or standing.  In this uashtanyi we keep meal in order to do sacrifice at the time when rain ought to fall.  The pictures of the Shiuana call the Shiuana themselves!  So you see what the Koshare want with this thing.”

Okoya’s lips had slowly parted in growing astonishment; and Mitsha, to whom the explanation was not altogether new, watched the expression of his features with genuine delight.

“And when you pray and scatter meal out of this,”—­pointing to the bowl,—­“does the rain always come?”

“Always.”

“Why, then, did it not rain last summer?”

“That I cannot tell you,” said the woman.  “Only the Shiuana know.  Besides, there are bad people who stop the rain from coming.”

“How can they do that?” cried both Okoya and Mitsha in surprise, neither of them having heard as yet of such a thing.

“I must not tell you that,” said Hannay, with a mysterious and important air; “you are too young to know it.  Tell me, Okoya,”—­her voice changed with the change of the subject,—­“does Shotaye Koitza often come to see your mother?”

This question was highly imprudent.  But Hannay was often imprudent.  Smart and sly in a certain way, she was equally thoughtless in other matters.  The query so sudden, so abrupt, and so uncalled for must, she ought to have foreseen, look extremely suspicious.  And yet Okoya was on the point of answering, “She was at our home a few days ago.”  In time, however, he bethought himself of the warnings she had received, and replied in an unsteady tone,—­

“I don’t know.”

Hannay noticed his embarrassed manner, and saw at a glance that he was forewarned.  The “no” of the boy told her “yes.”  The discovery, however, that Okoya was on his guard was rather disagreeable; it angered her so much that her first impulse was to send him away.  But she soon changed her mind.  The youth was obedient; and if now he obeyed the counsels of his people, why might he not later on become accustomed to submission to his wife’s people also?  At all events he was good-natured, and according to Hannay’s conceptions, good-natured folk were always silly.  That smart but ill-natured persons might also prove extremely silly on occasions was far from her thoughts, and yet the very question she had imprudently put to Okoya was an instance of it.