The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong through the space between all the suns of infinity. He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion opened to illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile. The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You will please follow me, señor,” was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave Grant a glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed woman he saw. Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past--call for vengeance and blood-sacrifice--had possessed her. It was as if some mocking cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of blood lust in eyes. They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual. All the retainers of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the strain of awaiting an untoward event. When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe.