and
then there was a simultaneous about face.

After a while, open ranks; then rugs and blankets were brought; the
maidens sat down and the men danced at them; trot trot, aw aw, and rattle
rattle.

Every third girl now received a large empty gourd, a grooved board, and
the dry shoulder-bone of a sheep. Laying the board on the gourd, she drew
the bone sharply across the edges of the wood, thus producing a sound like
a watchman's rattle.

They danced once on each side of the square; then retired to a house and
rested fifteen minutes; then recommenced their trot. Meanwhile maidens
with large baskets ran about among the spectators, distributing meat,
roasted ears of corn, sheets of bread, and guavas.

So the gayety went on until the sun and the visitors alike withdrew.

"After all, I think it is more interesting than our marriages," declared
Aunt Maria. "I wonder if we ought to make presents to the wedded couples.
There are a good many of them."

She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a
rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up
in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take
part in public spectacles.

"What exquisite delicacy!" was her consolatory comment. "Well, well, this
is the golden age, truly."

When further informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who
takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and
the girl's father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley
almost shed tears of gratification. Here was something like woman's
rights; here was a flash of the glorious dawn of equality between the
sexes; for when she talked of equality she meant female preeminence.

"And divorces?" she eagerly asked.

"They are at the pleasure of the parties," explained Thurstane, who had
been catechising the chief at great length through his Navajo.

"And who, in case of a divorce, cares for the children?"

"The grandparents."

Aunt Maria came near clapping her hands. This was better than Connecticut
or Indiana. A woman here might successively marry all the men whom she
might successively fancy, and thus enjoy a perpetual gush of the
affections and an unruffled current of happiness.

To such extreme views had this excellent creature been led by brooding
over what she called the wrongs of her sex and the legal tyranny of the
other.

But we must return to Coronado and Clara. The