"For my father," Mitsha proudly replied.
"What may Tyope want with it?" asked the boy. "I have seen uashtanyi like this, but they stood before the altar and there was meal in them. It was when the Shiuana appeared on the wall. What may sa nashtio use this for?"
"I don't know," Mitsha replied, and her eye turned to her mother timidly askance and with an expression of doubt.
Hannay saw here an excellent pretext to put in a word of her own which she had wished to say long before.
"I will tell you, sa uishe; I will speak to you as I would to my own child." The artful flattery had its desired effect. Okoya became very attentive; he moved closer apparently to the mother,—in reality, to the daughter.
"You know Tyope is a Koshare, and I am Koshare too; and he is very wise, a great man among those who create delight. Now it may be that you know also what we have to do."
"You have to make rain," said the youth; for such was the common belief among the younger people about the duties of the society.
Hannay and Mitsha looked at each other smiling, the simple-mindedness of the boy amused them.
"You are right," the woman informed him. "After we have prayed, fasted, and done penance, it ought to rain, in order that yamunyi may grow to koatshit, and koatshit ripen to yakka." In these words she artfully shrouded the true objects of the Koshare. It enhanced their importance in the eyes of the uninitiated listener by making him believe that the making of rain was also an attribute of theirs. "See, uak," she proceeded, "on this bowl you see everything painted that 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.