"What happened yesterday?" another.
"Did you have a quarrel with boys," a third; and so on. All pressed around begging and coaxing them to tell the story of yesterday's adventure. The heroines themselves looked at each other in embarrassment. At last Aistshie broke out,—
"You tell it, Sayap."
"Well," began the latter, "it was yesterday afternoon and we were just putting on the last touches of the coating, when Okoya and little Shyuote his brother—"
A clod, skilfully hurled, struck her right ear, filling it with sand and cutting off the thread of her narrative rather abruptly. Sayap wheeled around to see whence the blow had come. The other girls all laughed, but she was angry. Her wrath was raised to the highest pitch however, when she discovered that Shyuote was the aggressor. On a little eminence near by stood the scamp, dancing, cutting capers, and yelling triumphantly.
"Shyuote is small, but he knows how to throw."
"Fiend," cried Sayap in reply. She picked up a stone, raised it in the awkward manner in which most girls handle missiles, and running toward the boy hurled it at him. It fell far short of its mark, of course, and Shyuote only laughed, danced, and grimaced so much the more. As Sayap kept advancing and the other girls followed, he threw a second clod, which struck her squarely in the face, and so sharply that blood flowed from her nose and mouth. At the same time the rogue shouted at the top of his voice,—
"Come on! All of you! I am not afraid. You will never catch me!"
And as the majority of his pursuers came on, while two or three remained behind soothing and consoling Sayap, who stood still, crying and bleeding, he thrust out his tongue at them its full length, performed a number of odious grimaces, and then nimbly clambered up between a group of erosive cones that lay in front of the cliff. He turned around once more to yell defiance and scorn at his pursuers, and disappeared on the other side. Farther pursuit being hopeless, the girls clustered around the weeping Sayap and held a council of war. They vowed dire vengeance on the lad, and promised their injured sister to improve the first opportunity that should present itself.
Shyuote, on the other hand, felt proud of his success. His revenge was, he felt, a glorious one. Still he was careful not to forget the counsels of prudence, and instead of returning to the house by a direct route, which might have carried him too near the enraged damsels, he sauntered along, hugging the cliffs for some distance, and then cautiously sneaked into the fields below the new homes of the Maize clan. Once in the corn he felt safe, and was about to cross the brook to the south side, when the willows bordering the streamlet rustled and tossed, and a voice called to him from the thicket,—