THE SEEKING OF THE MAIDENS OF CORN BY THE FALCON.
They found him sitting on an ant hill; nor would he have paused but for their cries of peaceful import, for, said he, as they approached him, "If ye have snare-strings I will be off like the flight of an arrow well plumed of our feathers!"
"Nay, now!" said the twain. "Thy elder brother hath bidden us seek thee." Thereupon they told him what had passed, and how that the Eagle had failed to find their maidens so white and beautiful.
"Failed, say ye? Of course he failed! For he clambers aloft to the clouds and thinks, forsooth, that he can see under every bush and into every shadow, as sees the Sun-father who sees not with eyes! Go ye before," said the Falcon; and ere they had turned toward the town, he had spread his sharp wings and was skimming off over the tops of the trees and bushes as though verily seeking for field mice or birds' nests. And the warriors returned to tell the fathers and await his coming; but after he had sought far over the world to the north and the west, the east and the south, he too returned and was received as had been the Eagle; but when he had settled on the edge of a tray, before the altar, as on the ant hills he settles today, and had smoked and been smoked as had been the Eagle, he told the sorrowing fathers and mothers that he had looked behind every copse and cliff-shadow, but of the maidens had found no trace. "They are hidden more closely than ever sparrow hid," said he, gripping the cover of the tray on which he perched as though it were real feathers and blood, and ruffling his crest. Then he, too, flew away to his hills in the west.
"Alas! alas! our beautiful maiden mothers!" cried the matrons. "Lost, lost as the dead are they!" "Yea," said others, "where, how indeed, shall we seek them now? For the far-seeing Eagle and the close-searching Falcon alike have failed to find them."