Oello was very young when she married a young kinsman, with whom she had grown up since they were babies. Nobody knows much about him. But he loved her and she loved him. And when morning came they were not afraid to pray to God together,--and when night came she asked her husband to forgive her if she had troubled him, and he asked her to forgive him,--so that their worries and trials never lasted out the day. And they lived a very happy life, till they were very old and died. There is a bad gap in the beginning of their history. I do not know how it happened. But the first I knew of them, they had left their old home and were wandering alone on foot toward the South. Sometimes I have thought a great earthquake had wrecked their old happy home. Sometimes I have thought there was some horrid pestilence, or fire. No matter what happened, something happened,--so that Oello and her husband, of a hot, very hot day, were alone under a forest of laurels mixed with palms, with bright flowering orchids on them, looking like a hundred butterflies; ferns, half as high as the church is, tossing over them; nettles as large as trees, and tangled vines, threading through the whole. They were tired, oh, how tired! hungry, oh, how hungry! and hot and foot-sore. "I wish so we were out of this hole," said he to her, "and yet I am afraid of the people we shall find when we come down to the lake side." "I do not know," said Oello, "why they should want to hurt us." "I do not know why they should want to," said he, "but I am afraid they will hurt us." "But we do not want to hurt them," said she. "For my part, all I want is a shelter to live under; and I will help them take care of their children, and 'I will spin their flax, And weave their thread, And pound their corn, And bake their bread.'" "How will you tell them that you will do this?" said he. "I will do it," said Oello, "and that will be better than telling them." "But do not you just wish," said he, "that you could speak five little words of their language, to say to them that we come as friends, and not as enemies?" Oello laughed very heartily. "Enemies," said she, "terrible enemies, who have two sticks for their weapons, two old bags for their stores, and cotton clothes for their armor. I do not believe more than half the army will turn out against us." So Oello pulled out the potatoes from the ashes, and found they were baked; she took a little salt from her haversack or scrip, and told her husband that dinner would be ready, if he would only bring some water. He pretended to groan, but went, and came in a few minutes with two gourds full, and they made a very merry meal. * * * * *