a new hide, and some old woman a new white cotton wrap.  Their pieces of clothing appear like new mendings on old rags, or like a substantial shawl thrown over scanty vestments.  The older members of this peculiar group look down upon the merry spectacle below with grave and melancholy eyes; the younger would fain be merry also, but sadness lurks in their smiles.  The children alone yield fully to the excitement and happiness of the hour.  As the gifts fall down from above the older ones do not attempt to seize them; the girls and younger women gather what they can and place them carefully in a heap.  What the children do not succeed in devouring at once is taken away from them and placed with the rest.  They are improving the opportunity to lay in stores, and the Tanos lend them a willing hand.  Spectators below turn over to them what has fallen to their share, others place what they have secured with the little hoard the strangers are accumulating.  For these people, so poorly clad and looking so needy, must be strangers in the village of Hishi.  Strangers, yes; but strangers in need; and could there be any sacrifice, any offering, more agreeable to those on high than the feeding of people whom they allow to live by thrusting them on the charity of fellow-beings?  These strangers are after all but children of the same spiritual parents from the upper world, and as such they are brothers, sisters, and relatives.

That the strangers are village Indians can easily be seen.  It is proved by the cut of the hair, and by the rags which still protect their bodies from absolute nakedness.  But the tongue they speak is different from that spoken by the people of Hishi.  To us, however, it is not new.  We have heard that dialect before.  It is the Queres language, the language of the Rito.  The strangers are the lost ones whom Hayoue and Zashue have sought so anxiously and with so much suffering, and for the sake of whom they have exposed their lives a hundred times perhaps, in vain.  Zashue was right, the fugitives had turned south from the Bocas; and had Hayoue been less self-sufficient they would have found them ere now.

Still we miss among that little band of Queres fugitives those with whom we have become more closely acquainted.

[Illustration:  Ruins of an Ancient Pueblo]

In vain we look for Say Koitza, for Mitsha, for Okoya.  Can it be true, as Hayoue surmised, that his bosom friend, Zashue’s eldest son, is dead?

The throwing about of fruit has ceased; the dance is resumed, and new figures may appear.  Everybody hushes, and fastens his gaze on the performance.