ubmitted without response to the
embrace and gentle good-by kiss on her brown forehead.

The good woman gazed into my face with penetrating eyes, as if to
measure my trustworthiness.

"You will see that no harm comes to my little Po-a-be. The wolves of the
forest are not the only danger for the unprotected lambs," she said,
earnestly.

"I'll do my best, Mother Bridget," I responded, feeling a swelling pride
in my double charge.

Mother Bridget patted Eloise's hand and turned away. She loved all of
her girls, but her heart went out most to the Indian maidens whom she
led toward her civilization and her sacred creed.

As she turned away, the priest who was to go with us came out of the
church door to the stage.

Little Blue Flower sat with the other two women, facing us, her
dark-green dress with her rich coloring making as strong a contrast as
the nun's black robe against the pink-touched silver-gray gown. And the
Indian face, strong, impenetrable, with a faintly feminine softening of
the racial features, and the luminous black eyes, gave setting to the
pure Saxon type of her companion.

I turned from the three to greet the priest and give him a place beside
me. His face seemed familiar, but it was not until I heard his voice, in
a courteous good-morning, that I knew him to be the Father Josef who had
met us on the way into Santa Fe years before, and who later had shown us
the little golden-haired girl asleep on the hard bench in the old
mission church of Agua Fria. A page of my boyhood seemed suddenly to
have opened there, and I wondered curiously at the meaning of it all.
Life, that for three years had been something of a monotonous round of
action for a boy of the frontier, was suddenly filling each day with
events worth while. I wondered many things concerning Father Josef's
presence there, but I had the grace to ask no questions as we five
journeyed over the rolling green prairies of Kansas in the pleasant time
of year which the Hopi calls the Moon of the Peach Blossom.

The priest appeared hardly a day older than when I had first seen him,
and he chatted genially as we rode along.

"We are losing two of our stars," he said, with a gallant little bow.
"Miss St. Vrain goes to St. Louis to relatives, I believe, and Little
Blue Flower, eventually, to New Mexico. St. Ann's under Mother Bridget
is doing a wonderful work among our people, but it is not often that a
girl comes here from such a distance as New Me