ged with mud _casas_ was, indeed,
hardly in accord with Jane's experience of the girl's dignity; but that
she should be playing ever so foolishly in a slush of clay delighted
Jane as being a healthful symptom.

"What you making down yonder, honey?" she ventured to ask.

"I am making nothing; I am finished," said Lola. "To-morrow you shall
see my work." Jane felt taken aback. It had been work, then; not simple
play. She awaited what should follow with curious interest.

Upon the next morning Lola ran off through the alfalfa rather
excitedly. After a little she reappeared, walking slowly, with an air
of importance. She carried something carefully before her, holding it
above the reach of the alfalfa's snatching green fingers.

It was a square pedestal of adobe, sun-baked hard as stone, upon which
sat a queer adobe creature, with a lean body and a great bulbous head.
This personage showed the presence in his anatomy of an element of
finely chopped straw. His slits of eyes were turned prayerfully
upward. From his widely open mouth hung a thirsty mud tongue, and
between his knobby knees he held an empty bowl, toward the filling of
which his whole expression seemed an invocation.

"He is for you," said Lola, beaming artistic gratification. "He is to
show my thanks for your caring for me in my broken-bonedness. He is
Tesuque, the rain-god. You can let your ditches fill with weeds, if you
like. You won't need to irrigate your _vega_ any more. Tesuque will
make showers come."

Jane trembled with surprised pleasure. The powers ascribed to Tesuque
were hardly accountable for the gratification with which she received
him.

"I'll value him as long as I live!" she exclaimed. "He--he's real
handsome!"

"Not handsome," corrected Lola, with a tone of modest pride, "but
_good_! He makes the rain come. In Taos are many Tesuques."

"I reckon it must rain considerable there," surmised Jane, not
unnaturally.

Lola shook her head. "No. It's pretty dry--but it wouldn't rain at all,
you see, if it wasn't for Tesuque!"

This logic was irresistible. Jane dwelt smilingly upon it as she set
the rain-god on the mantel, with a crockery bowl of yellow daisies to
maintain his state. Afterward, a dark, adder-like compunction glided
through the flowery expanse of her joy in Tesuque, as she wondered if
there was not something heathenish in his lordly enshrinement upon a
Christian mantelpiece.

"Maybe he's an idol!" thought Jane. "Lola," sh