a man.

"He spoke sharply to the Chief Corn Woman to know why strangers were
received within the town without his knowledge.

"Waits-by-the-Fire answered quickly. 'We are guests of the Corn, O
Cacique, and in my dream I seem to have heard of your hospitality to
women of the Corn.' You see there had been an old story when he was
young, how one of the Corn Maidens had gone to his house and had been
kept there against her will, which was a discredit to him. He was so
astonished to hear the strange woman speak of it that he turned and went
out of the god-house without another word. The people took up the
incident and whispered it from mouth to mouth to prove that the strange
Shaman was a great prophet. So we were appointed a house to live in and
were permitted to serve the Corn."

"But what did you do?" Dorcas insisted on knowing.

"We dug and planted. All this was new to us. When there was no work in
the fields we learned the ways of cooking corn, and to make pots.
Hunting-tribes do not make pots. How should we carry them from place to
place on our backs? We cooked in baskets with hot stones, and sometimes
when the basket was old we plastered it with mud and set it on the fire.
But the People of the Corn made pots of coiled clay and burned it hard
in the open fires between the houses. Then there was the ceremony of the
Corn to learn, the prayers and the dances. Oh, we had work enough! And
if ever anything was ever said or done to us which was not pleasant,
Waits-by-the-Fire would say to the one who had offended, 'We are only
the servants of the Corn, but it would be a pity if the same thing
happened to you that happened to the grandfather of your next-door