rms that were reaching up to her, and tried
to rise from her seat; but she could not move.

"Set still! set still!" said the strange voice. "I'll jest carry the
baby ter my wife, an' come back fur you. I allowed yer couldn't git up
on yer feet;" and the tall form disappeared. The baby, thus vigorously
disturbed from her warm sleep, began to cry.

"Thank God!" said Alessandro, at the plunging horses' heads. "The child
is alive! Majella!" he called.

"Yes, Alessandro," she answered faintly, the gusts sweeping her voice
like a distant echo past him.

It was a marvellous rescue. They had been nearer the old sheep-corral
than Alessandro had thought; but except that other storm-beaten
travellers had reached it before them, Alessandro had never found it.
Just as he felt his strength failing him, and had thought to himself,
in almost the same despairing words as Ramona, "This will end all our
troubles," he saw a faint light to the left. Instantly he had turned the
horses' heads towards it. The ground was rough and broken, and more than
once he had been in danger of overturning the wagon; but he had pressed
on, shouting at intervals for help. At last his call was answered, and
another light appeared; this time a swinging one, coming slowly towards
him,--a lantern, in the hand of a man, whose first words, "Wall,
stranger, I allow yer inter trouble," were as intelligible to Alessandro
as if they had been spoken in the purest San Luiseno dialect.

Not so, to the stranger, Alessandro's grateful reply in Spanish.

"Another o' these no-'count Mexicans, by thunder!" thought Jeff Hyer to
himself. "Blamed ef I'd lived in a country all my life, ef I wouldn't
know better'n to git caught out in such weather's this!" And as he put
the crying babe into his wife's arms, he said half impatiently, "Ef I'd
knowed 't wuz Mexicans, Ri, I wouldn't ev' gone out ter 'um. They're
more ter hum 'n I am, 'n these yer tropicks."

"Naow, Jeff, yer know yer wouldn't let ennythin' in shape ev a human
creetur go perishin' past aour fire sech weather's this," replied the
woman, as she took the baby, which recognized the motherly hand at its
first touch, and ceased crying.

"Why, yer pooty, blue-eyed little thing!" she exclaimed, as she looked
into the baby's face. "I declar, Jos, think o' sech a mite's this bein'
aout'n this weather. I'll jest warm up some milk for it this minnit."

"Better see't th' mother fust, Ri," said Jeff, leading, half carrying,