"'Stepmother,' cried Loa one day, -- she
whom her mother had called the little bird,
-- 'we are a-cold because of our rags. Our
mother would have woven blue cloth for us
and made it into garments.'

"'Your mother is where she will weave no
cloth!' said the stepmother, and she laughed
many times.

"All in the cold and still of that night, the
stepmother wakened, and she knew not why.
She sat up in her bed, and knew not why.
She knew not why, and she looked into the
room, and there, by the light of a burning
fish's tail -- 'twas such a light the folk used in
those days -- was a woman, weaving. She had
no loom, and shuttle she had none. All with
her hands she wove a wondrous cloth. Stoop-
ing and bending, rising and swaying with
motions beautiful as those the Northern
Lights make in a midwinter sky, she wove a
cloth. The warp was blue and mystical to
see, the woof was white, and shone with its
whiteness, so that of all the webs the step-
mother had ever seen, she had seen none like
to this.

"Yet the sight delighted her not, for beyond
the drifting web, and beyond the weaver she