tly foolish!" gasped Dora.

"Not to Smith," Susie replied dryly, "nor to Mr. Ralston."

Susie looked at the unoccupied chairs at the table as she and Dora seated
themselves. Ralston's, Tubbs's, Smith's, and McArthur's chairs were
vacant.

"Looks like you're losin' your boarders fast, Ling," she remarked.

"Good thing," Ling answered candidly.

The Indian woman gulped her coffee, but refused the food which was passed
to her. A strange faintness, accompanied by nausea, was creeping upon her.
Her vision was blurred, and she saw Meeteetse Ed, at the opposite end of
the table, as through a fog. She pushed back her chair and went into the
living-room, swaying a little as she walked. A faint moan caught Susie's
ear, and she hastened to her mother.

The woman was lying on the floor by the bench where she sewed, her head
pillowed on her rag-rug.

"Mother! Why, what's the matter with your hand? It's swelled!"

"I heap sick, Susie!" she moaned. "My arm aches me."

"Look!" cried Susie, who had turned back her sleeve. "Her arm is black--a
purple black, and it's swellin' up!"

"Oh, I heap sick!"

"What did you do to your arm, Mother? Did you have the bandage off?"

"Yes, it come off, and I pin him up," said Ling, who was standing by.

A paroxysm of pain seized the woman, and she writhed.

"It looks exactly like a rattlesnake bite! I saw a fellow once that was
bit in the ankle, and it swelled up and turned a color like that,"
declared Susie in horror. "Mother, you haven't been foolin' with snakes,
or been bit?"

The woman shook her head.

"I no been bit," she groaned, and her eyes had in them the appealing look
of a sick spaniel.

Dora and Susie helped her to her room, and though they tried every simple
remedy of which they had ever heard, to reduce the rapidly swelling arm,
all seemed equally unavailing. The woman's convulsions hourly became more
violent and frequent, while her arm was frightful to behold--black, as it
was, from hand to shoulder with coagulated blood.

"If only we had an idea of the cause!" cried Dora, distracted.

"Mother, can't you imagine anything that would make your arm bad like
this? Try to think."

But though drops of perspiration stood on the woman's forehead, and her
grip tore the pillow, she obstinately shook her head.

"I be better pretty soon," was all she would say, and tried to smile at
Susie.

"If only some one would come!" Dora went to the open window often and
listened for