exclaimed Ramona; "I have
been thinking the same thing. My head aches after I am in that room but
an hour, and when I come here I am well. But the nights too, Alessandro?
Is it not harmful to sleep out in the night air?"

"Why, Senorita?" asked Alessandro, simply.

And Ramona had no answer, except, "I do not know; I have always heard
so."

"My people do not think so," replied Alessandro; "unless it is cold,
we like it better. It is good, Senorita, to look up at the sky in the
night."

"I should think it would be," cried Ramona. "I never thought of it. I
should like to do it."

Alessandro was busy, with his face bent down, arranging the bedstead in
a sheltered corner of the veranda. If his face had been lifted, Ramona
would have seen a look on it that would have startled her more than
the one she had surprised a few days previous, after the incident with
Margarita. All day there had been coming and going in Alessandro's brain
a confused procession of thoughts, vague yet intense. Put in words,
they would have been found to be little more than ringing changes on
this idea: "The Senorita Ramona has Indian blood in her veins. The
Senorita Ramona is alone. The Senora loves her not. Indian blood! Indian
blood!" These, or something like them, would have been the words; but
Alessandro did not put them in words. He only worked away on the rough
posts for Senor Felipe's bedstead, hammered, fitted, stretched the
raw-hide and made it tight and firm, driving every nail, striking every
blow, with a bounding sense of exultant strength, as if there were
suddenly all around him a new heaven and a new earth.

Now, when he heard Ramona say suddenly in her girlish, eager tone, "It
must be; I never thought of it; I should like to try it," these vague
confused thoughts of the day, and the day's bounding sense of exultant
strength, combined in a quick vision before Alessandro's eyes,--a vision
of starry skies overhead, Ramona and himself together, looking up to
them. But when he raised his head, all he said was, "There, Senorita!
That is all firm, now. If Senor Felipe will let me lay him an this bed,
he will sleep as he has not slept since he fell ill."

Ramona ran eagerly into Felipe's room, "The bed is all ready on the
veranda," she exclaimed. "Shall Alessandro come in and carry you out?"

Felipe looked up, startled. The Senora turned on Ramona that expression
of gentle, resigned displeasure, which always hurt the girl's sensitive