The signs intimated that the great mystic Red Spider,
_Kananiski gigage_, had woven his unseen web about the boy, and he
could not escape from those constraining meshes. As to the men--she
concluded that they were blown away somewhere. The wind had attended to
that little matter. "_Agaluga Hegwa! Atigale yata tsutu negliga_," she
exclaimed in grateful rapture. ("Oh, great Whirlwind! By you they must
have been scattered.")
Happiness had long held aloof. She was of the poorest of the tribe;
childless, for many years; a widow; she suffered much from rheumatism;
she was slowly going blind; she was deemed unlucky and avoided. For more
than once of late years she had in important crises predicted disaster,
and this prophecy, by fortuitous circumstances, had been fulfilled; thus
those to whom a deceitful hope is preferable to a warning of trouble
sought by fleeing the oracle to elude the misfortune. Being esteemed a
witch, and associated with dark dealings and prone to catastrophe, she
lived in peculiar solitude, and the two spent the long months of the
winter within the cabin together, while the mountain snows lay heavy on
the eaves and the mountain winds beat and gibed at the door.
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