Sinyella is half a skeptic. He sat back in the lodge and watched Sack, the medicine man, in the firelight beside his sister’s sick grandson. Let the other relatives shout to make the shaman strong: he would wait, if the boy died, he would kill the incompetent. The shaman knelt over the boy, swaying as he sang, his head to one side, his left knuckles clenched over his closed eyes, his clashing rattle in the other hand. Once he stopped rigid with open mouth, so that his familiar spirit might leave his chest to search for sickening ghosts outside the house. Then he rose and went out into the dark. Sinyella heard his spirit halloing and whistling as it returned to him out there. The shaman reëntered and resumed his singing. He put his lips to the boy’s forehead that the spirit might go in search of the sickness. He sucked the spirit back with a gulp, spat into his palm, and triumphantly exhibited its contents, some little white thread-like worms. “That was hard for me, but I have taken out all the sickness; there is no more there now.” Well, the boy’s father would give Sack a big blanket, but Sinyella decided that he, at any rate, would wait.