mecula people, the sheriff
did; but he had to obey the law himself. Alessandro says there isn't any
help."

Aunt Ri shook her head. She was not convinced. "I sh'll make a business
o' findin' out abaout this thing yit," she said. "I think yer hain't got
the rights on't yit. There's cheatin' somewhere!"

"It's all cheating." said Ramona; "but there isn't any help for it, Aunt
Ri. The Americans think it is no shame to cheat for money."

"I'm an Ummeriken!" cried Aunt Ri; "an' Jeff Hyer, and Jos! We're
Ummerikens! 'n' we wouldn't cheat nobody, not ef we knowed it, not
out er a doller. We're pore, an' I allus expect to be, but we're above
cheatin'; an' I tell you, naow, the Ummeriken people don't want any o'
this cheatin' done, naow! I'm going to ask Jeff haow 'tis. Why, it's a
burnin' shame to any country! So 'tis! I think something oughter be done
abaout it! I wouldn't mind goin' myself, ef thar wan't anybody else!"

A seed had been sown in Aunt Ri's mind which was not destined to die for
want of soil. She was hot with shame and anger, and full of impulse to
do something. "I ain't nobody," she said; "I know thet well enough,--I
ain't nobody nor nothin'; but I allow I've got suthin' to say abaout the
country I live in, 'n' the way things hed oughter be; or 't least Jeff
hez; 'n' thet's the same thing. I tell yer, Jos, I ain't goin' to rest,
nor ter give yeou 'n' yer father no rest nuther, till yeou find aout
what all this yere means she's been tellin' us."

But sharper and closer anxieties than any connected with rights to lands
and homes were pressing upon Alessandro and Ramona. All summer the baby
had been slowly drooping; so slowly that it was each day possible for
Ramona to deceive herself, thinking that there had been since yesterday
no loss, perhaps a little gain; but looking back from the autumn to the
spring, and now from the winter to the autumn, there was no doubt that
she had been steadily going down. From the day of that terrible chill
in the snow-storm, she had never been quite well, Ramona thought. Before
that, she was strong, always strong, always beautiful and merry, Now her
pinched little face was sad to see, and sometimes for hours she made a
feeble wailing cry without any apparent cause. All the simple remedies
that Aunt Ri had known, had failed to touch her disease; in fact,
Aunt Ri from the first had been baffled in her own mind by the child's
symptoms. Day after day Alessandro knelt by the cradle,