sought him. So he sent them to seek the Maidens, following swiftly, and
long before he found them he greeted them with the music of his
songsound, even as the People of the Seed now greet them in the song of
the dancers.

When the Maidens heard his music and saw his tall form in their great
fields of corn, they plucked ears, each of her own kind, and with them
filled their colored trays and over all spread embroidered
mantles, - embroidered in all the bright colors and with the
creature-songs of Summer-land. So they sallied forth to meet him and
welcome him. Then he greeted them, each with the touch of his hands and
the breath of his flute, and bade them follow him to the northland home
of their deserted children.

So by the magic of their knowledge they sped back as the stars speed
over the world at night time, toward the home of our ancients. Only at
night and dawn they journeyed, as the dead do, and the stars also. So
they came at evening in the full of the last moon to the Place of the
Middle, bearing their trays of seed.

Glorious was Paiyatuma, as he walked into the courts of the dancers in
the dusk of the evening and stood with folded arms at the foot of the
bow-fringed ladder of priestly council, he and his follower Shutsukya.
He was tall and beautiful and banded with his own mists, and carried the
banded wings of the turkeys with which he had winged his flight from
afar, leading the Maidens, and followed as by his own shadow by the
black being of the corn-soot, Shutsukya, who cries with the voice of the
frost wind when the corn has grown aged and the harvest is taken away.

And surpassingly beautiful were the Maidens clothed in the white cotton