anyway."

He started down the log-paved walk, toward the Chief's house on the other side of the village. He could see it clearly at the far end of the long, muddy street, but it was necessary to walk along a twisting detour, rather than directly toward it. There was an acre of ground in the center of the village, filled with crumbling, empty huts, and no Kya walked through this ground. It belonged to Sa'ahah, whose ghost walked in a wide circle around the hut where a jealous rival had speared him in his sleep.

The house was the usual Kya affair, on tall stilts, with painted signs on its facade, but much more elaborate as befitted the Chief's position. He was Anla-Who-Speaks-for-the-Ancestors. There were several other kinds of chief, but it was Anla whom Grady consulted before trying anything in the least unusual. Anla sat on his porch now, regarding the sun through slitted eyes.

Grady greeted him in proper form, and Anla returned the greeting, rising and bowing.

"Is there any reason why this person may not attend the dance of Koor with his brothers on this night?" Grady asked.

Anla thoughtfully pulled his lower lip; then, nodding, he said, "No, there is no reason not to."

Then Grady made the mistake. He made it in full view of Anla's mother-in-law, who sat peering balefully out from her special room in the corner of the Chief's house; and of Anla's wife, and of his wife's innumerable relations, who were clustered on the porch. When Grady saw their silent staring, he looked down at his feet, and he saw what it was that he had done. Anla saw it too, and the two men looked up again, and at each other, very gravely.

Grady did not say he was sorry. It would have been of no use whatever. Nor did he point out that the sun came out so infrequently that his mistake was one which could be excused. Among the Kya there are very few mistakes which can be excused, and stepping on the shadow of a chief is not one of them.

Neither did Anla make any reference to the long friendship between them, because there would have been no point in doing so. Anla's eyes grew darker, and the wrinkles at their corners deepened, but his words were calm, the correct words for such a time.

"Your name was Shassa," Anla said. "You have broken the ghost-cloak of the Chief, and your name cannot be Shassa. From this place and this time I take back your name, 

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