mere jerky termination of
the body. It had some individuality apart from hats and hairpins. Her
hair, Moonstone women admitted, would have been very pretty "on anybody
else." Frizzy bangs were worn then, but Mrs. Kronborg always dressed her
hair in the same way, parted in the middle, brushed smoothly back from
her low, white forehead, pinned loosely on the back of her head in two
thick braids. It was growing gray about the temples, but after the
manner of yellow hair it seemed only to have grown paler there, and had
taken on a color like that of English primroses. Her eyes were clear and
untroubled; her face smooth and calm, and, as Ray said, "strong."

Thea and Ray, up in the sunny cupola, were laughing and talking. Ray got
great pleasure out of seeing her face there in the little box where he
so often imagined it. They were crossing a plateau where great red
sandstone boulders lay about, most of them much wider at the top than at
the base, so that they looked like great toadstools.

"The sand has been blowing against them for a good many hundred years,"
Ray explained, directing Thea's eyes with his gloved hand. "You see the
sand blows low, being so heavy, and cuts them out underneath. Wind and
sand are pretty high-class architects. That's the principle of most of
the Cliff-Dweller remains down at Canyon de Chelly. The sandstorms had
dug out big depressions in the face of a cliff, and the Indians built
their houses back in that depression."

"You told me that before, Ray, and of course you know. But the geography
says their houses were cut out of the face of the living rock, and I
like that better."

Ray sniffed. "What nonsense does get printed! It's enough to give a man
disrespect for learning. How could them Indians cut houses out of the
living rock, when they knew nothing about the art of forging metals?"
Ray leaned back in his chair, swung his foot, and looked thoughtful and
happy. He was in one of his favorite fields of speculation, and nothing
gave him more pleasure than talking these things over with Thea
Kronborg. "I'll tell you, Thee, if those old fellows had learned to work
metals once, your ancient Egyptians and Assyrians wouldn't have beat
them very much. Whatever they did do, they did well. Their masonry's
standing there to-day, the corners as true as the Denver Capitol. They
were clever at most everything but metals; and that one failure kept
them from getting across. It was the quicksand that swallowe