thorny melon-cacti, and all the while he was wondering how it was that the Indian woman spoke such perfect English.

Suddenly his horse threw up its head, jumped a few feet to one side, then dropped quietly back to browsing. Looking over his shoulder, the doctor saw the Moqui woman coming down the trail with a huge water jar hung on her back in a large fold of her blanket. She smiled when she came up and made a remark about the sandstorm of the day before. The doctor gallantly caught up the gourd dipper and insisted on filling the jar for her. All the while he kept up a running conversation, and when he poured the last dipperful of water into the jar he had reached the point where he could ask her with propriety to tell him all about herself, and he did.

She was reluctant at first, but finally she began her story by saying she had been left an orphan at four years of age. Then she continued her story:

"You see there was no one to take care of me but my grandfather. One day a missionary prevailed upon him to send me to the Indian school at Keam's cañon. I stayed there until I was sixteen years old. I became much interested in my work, and at the end of my last year at Keam's cañon I was told that I was to be sent east to the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania. I look back upon that day as the happiest of my life-no, I won't say that, either, for the day I left Carlisle was a great day to me. It had been told me every day that I should go back to my people and show them the error of their ways. It was with a happy feeling of duty and responsibility that I started west.

"But what a fool I was! I hate to think about it. When I arrived in Oribi in my Eastern clothes I immediately became the laughing-stock of the village. Every time I spoke I was either jeered at by my companions or rebuked by my elders. The young men of the village made unpleasant remarks about me as I passed, and the old men and women upbraided me for having no respect for my ancestors' customs and traditions. I endured their reproaches and sneers for a long while, but at last I gave up in despair, threw away my Eastern clothes

and my Eastern manners with them. Then I left Oribi and came here to live with a distant relative and to forget the past.

"I thought of going back to Pennsylvania, of clerking in a store, of doing housework and all that sort of thing; but after a time I gave it all up and resigned myself to my fate.'

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"And what did fate have in store for you?" asked the doctor.

She answered, smiling, "A husband."

"Now you are wrapped up in your children and are happy?” "No, I have no children. My only child died when it was but six months old. It took a fever, and when I saw that it was in danger I tried to get my husband to go to Winslow for a physician, but it was all in vain. He would not listen. He feared the wrath of the chief and of the native priests. I saw it was no use, so I simply nursed my child until one night it died in my lap. The next day we took the little thing back to the graveyard up on the mesa and buried it with the regular Moqui ceremony."

"Well," said the doctor, after a pause, "what can be done for the Moquis?"

"Nothing. Let them alone. They are happy now, and, you know, 'where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.'"

In the meantime the "chuck wagon" had gone by, and the doctor rose to leave. He offered to send her some books and magazines, but she begged him not to do so, saying that she wanted to forget such things.

LEAVING THE LATCH-STRING OUT.

During the French and Indian War many towns and settlements in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as in other sections of the country, suffered severely from Indian raids.

A family of Friends, who lived in a lonely house not far from the Delaware River, and seemed to feel no fear, took no precautions against the savages. Their simple dwelling had never known a lock or bolt, and the only concession they had

ever made to the custom of "the world's people" was to pull in at night the string that lifted the wooden latch of their door. Even this precaution seemed to them needless, and was as often forgotten as remembered.

Prowling parties of Indians had begun frightful ravages in the vicinity of the settlement, and evidences of their cruel work could be seen every day nearer and nearer. Warnings came to the Quaker and his wife, and one night the effect of the fears of others more than their own kept them awake.

The argument of the old Friend with himself, as he lay thinking was after this fashion: He had always trusted in God; yet to-night he had pulled in the latch-string. A measure to prevent intrusion meant suspicion. Suspicion under the circumstances, meant fear.

He talked the matter over with his wife. It would be safer now to test their faith than to throw it away, he said. She agreed with him, and he got up and hung out the latch-string again.

Less than half an hour afterward the Indians came. The defenseless inmates of the house were wholly at their mercy. They heard the savage band creep by their bedroom window and pause as if surprised to find the latch-string out. Then they heard them open the door. A muttered talk in the native tongue kept the listeners in suspense for a minute or two; then the door was shut softly and the raiders went away.

The next day the smoke of ruined dwellings in sight of their cabin, and the lamentation of neighbors over their killed or captured kindred, told the Friends what they had escaped.

It was not until years afterward, during a conference between the colonists and the Indians, that the story was told of what had passed that fatal night at the Quaker's door. A chief, who had himself been a leader of the gang in the attack on the white settlement, declared that when he saw the latch-string out, the sign of fearless confidence made him change his mind. He held a short parley with his followers, and the substance of it

was: