ll; and added that the selection would be made from the Bible when
their father returned. So the big brothers carefully hunted out every
feminine name between Genesis and Revelations.

But at the end of a fortnight they too grew anxious, and the christening
was forgotten. No news had come from the army post, and so, one morning,
they set forth toward it with the St. Bernard, when the warm sun was
melting the white caps of the ridges. They did not have to go far. The
dog led them unerringly to a near-by bluff, from which they returned a
sad procession. And next day a mound rose on the southern slope of the
carnelian bluff and was covered high with stones, to keep away the
hungry prowlers of the plains. The storm that had ushered in the new
life had robbed the farm-house of the old.

* * * * *

SPRING had opened, and the thawing prairie lay in splotches of black and
white like the hide of a calico pony, before the family again thought of
the naming of the little girl. Then her mother despatched the youngest
brother to the post-office, a day's ride to the east, to mail an order
to a store in a far-away city. Though there seemed no possibility that
it would soon be decided what to call the little girl, preparations had
begun for the baptism at the sod church on the reservation, and the
order asked for five yards of fine linen and a pair of white kid shoes.

During the busy days of plowing and planting that followed, interest in
the christening was almost lost. And when the arrival of the linen and
the shoes revived it one afternoon in early summer, it was lost sight of
again in a rush of hoeing and herding. So it was not until late fall,
when all the crops were harvested and the threshers had come and gone,
that the family began once more to consider it.

It was time that the little girl had a name of her own, for she could
trot the length of the sitting-room, if she held on to the biggest
brother's finger, and walk, all by herself, from the lounge to the
table. Besides, she was learning to eat with a spoon, which she pounded
crossly on the oil-cloth when she could not find her mouth, and was
teething, without any worry to her mother, on an old soft
cartridge-belt.

The subject reopened the night the little girl's mother cut out the
baptismal robe. And while she tucked it in one succession of narrow rows
and began to embroider it in lacy patterns that she had learned to do
when she was a