"Then you must die!" said the magistrate.

"In the second place," went on Katipah, "I did not eat my own child."

"Prove it!" cried the chief magistrate again.

"I will," said Katipah; "O Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I ask."

Down the string of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then larger
till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and sliding, with
his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his ankles, and handfuls
of flowers which he threw into his mother's face as he came. "Oh! cruel chief
magistrate," cried Katipah, receiving the babe in her arms, "does it seem that
I have eaten him?"

"You are a witch!" said the chief magistrate, "or how do you come to have a
child that disappears and comes again from nowhere! It is not possible to
permit such things to be: you and your child shall both be burned together!"

Katipah drew softly upon the kite-string. "Oh, Gamma-gata," she cried, "lift
me up now very high, and I will not be afraid!"

Then suddenly, before all eyes, Katipah was lifted up by the cord of the kite
which she had wound about her waist; right up from the earth she was lifted
till her feet rested above the heads of the people.

Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly through the air, out of reach
of the hands stretched up to catch her, and addressed the populace in these
words: