and in it the three plates of lava on which the Indian crushes and pulverizes his maize were placed in the convenient slanting position.  Not only the prismatic crushing-pins, but freshly ground meal also, lay in the stone casings of the primitive mill, and on these the plates themselves.  Deerskins and cotton wraps were rolled in a bundle in another corner.  Others hung on a line made of rawhide and stretched across one end of the room, fastened to wooden pins driven into the soft rock.  On the floor—­to which a thick coating of mud, washed with blood and smoothed, gave a black, glossy appearance—­there were beside, here a few stone axes with handles, there some black sooty pots, painted bowls, and finally the inevitable water-urn with wide body and narrow top, decorated in the usual style with geometrical and symbolical figures painted in red and black on whitish ground.  The walls of the cave were burnished with burnt gypsum; the ceiling was covered by a thick coat of soot; and a band of yellow ochre, like wainscoting, ran along the base of the sides.

The owner of this troglodytic home, however, is not to be seen; but in a side chamber, which communicates with this apartment through one of the dark and low passages just described, a rustling sound is heard, as of some one rummaging about in darkness.  After a while a woman’s head peeps through the passage into the outer room, and little by little the whole body emerges, forcing itself through the narrow opening.  She rises and stands erect in front of the hearth, and the sunbeam which still enters the apartment by the round hole above the fireplace strikes her features full and enables us to scan them.  The woman into whose dwelling we have pryed, and who stands now in the dim chamber as sole occupant and owner, is Shotaye, Tyope’s former wife, and the friend who has given Say Koitza such ill advice.

If Shotaye be a witch, she certainly is far from displaying the hag-like appearance often attributed to the female sorcerer.  There is even something decidedly fascinating about her.  Shotaye, although near the forties, is for an Indian woman undoubtedly good-looking.  No wonder some other women of the tribe are afraid of her.  She is tall and well rounded, and her chest is of that fulnesss that develops at an early age in the women of the Pueblos.  Her face is even pretty,—­her lips are pouting and sensual, the nose small and shaped like a short, pointed beak, the cheek-bones high, while the chin indicates remarkable determination.  Magnificent black hair streams down her back.  It is as full as a wave, as lustrous as polished obsidian.

Her dress consists of a buckskin wrap without girdle, embroidered at the lower end with multi-coloured porcupine-quills.  Bracelets of white shells, a necklace of feldspar crystals and turquoises, and strings of yellow cotton threads around her ankles complete the costume.  Such is the woman who has played and still plays an ominous part in the history of Okoya’s mother, and in the history of the people at the Rito de los Frijoles.  Now that we have seen her home and her person, let us proceed with the tale of her doings on the afternoon to which the close of the preceding chapter has been devoted.