cape, and tripped away toward the bit of bushy grove just beyond the "corral."

What is that?

In the language of the very "far West" it is any spot or place where horses are gathered and kept, outside of a stable.

THE CORRAL.

The great Apache nation does not own a single stable or barn, although it does own multitudes of horses, ponies, mules, and even horned cattle. All these, therefore, have to be "corralled," except when they are running loose among their unfenced pastures; there are no fences in that part of the world any more than barns.

Immediately on going into camp the long train of pack mules and ponies had been relieved of their burdens, and they and most of the saddle-horses had been sent off, under the care of mounted herders, to pick their dinners for themselves in the rich green grass of the valley.

Chiefs and warriors, however, never walk if they can help it, and so, as some one of them might wish to go here or there at any moment, several dozens of the freshest animals were kept on the spot between the camp and the grove, tethered by long hide lariats, and compelled to wait their turn for something to eat.

There was a warrior on guard at the "corral," as a matter of course, but he hardly gave a glance to the pretty adopted daughter of Many Bears as she tripped hurriedly past him. It was his business to look out for the horses, and not for giddy young squaws who might find "talking leaves."

Rita could not have told him, if he had asked her, why it was that her prizes were making her heart beat so fast as she held them against it.

She was not frightened. She knew that very well. But she was glad to be alone, without even the company of Ni-ha-be.

The bushes were very thick around the spot where she at last threw herself upon the grass. She had never lived in any lodge where there were doors to shut behind her, or if she had, houses and doors were alike forgotten; but she knew that her quick ears would give her notice of any approaching footsteps.

There they lay now before her, the three magazines, and it seemed to Rita as if they had come on purpose to see her, and were looking at her.

No two of them were alike. They did not even belong to the same family. She could tell that by their faces.

Slowly and half timidly she turned the first leaf; it was the cover-leaf of the nearest.

A sharp exclamation sprang to her lips. "I have seen her! Oh, so long ago! It is me, Rita. I wore a dress like that once. And the tall squaw behind her, with the robe that drags on the ground, I remember her too. How did they know she was my mother?"

Rita's face had been growing very white, and now she covered it with both her hands, and began to cry.

The picture was one of a fine-looking lady and a little girl of it might be seven or eight years. Not Rita and her mother, surely, for the lady wore a coronet upon her head, and carried a sceptre in her hand, but the little girl looked very much as Rita must have looked at her age. It was a picture of some Spanish princess and her daughter, but like many pictures of such people that are printed, it would have served as well for a portrait of almost anybody else. Particularly, as it seemed to Rita, of herself and her mother.

"He is not there. Why did they not put him in? I loved him best. Oh, he was so good to me! He had plenty of talking leaves, too, and he taught them to speak to me. I will look and see if he is here."

Rita was talking aloud to herself, but her own voice sounded strange to her, with its Indian words, and ways of expression. She was listening without knowing it for another voice, for several of them, and none of them spoke Apache.

She turned leaf after leaf with fluttering haste in her eager search for that other face she had spoken of.

In a moment more she paused, as the full-length picture of a man gazed at her from the paper.

"No, not him. He is too old. My father was not old. And he was handsome, and he was not dark at all."

She shut the book for a moment, and her face was full of puzzle and of pain.

"I said it. I was not talking Apache then. And I understood what I was saying."

She had indeed, when she mentioned her father, spoken pretty clearly in English.

Was it her mother-tongue, and had it come back to her?

She turned over the leaves more eagerly than ever now, and she found in that and the two other magazines many pictured faces of men of all ages, but each one brought her a fresh disappointment.

"He is not here," she said, mournfully, "and it was he who taught me to—to—to read—books."

She had found two words now that were like little windows, for through them she could see a world of wonderful things that she had not seen before—"read" and "books."

The three magazines were no longer "talking leaves" to her, although they were really beginning to talk. Her head ached, and her eyes were burning hot, as she gazed so intently at word after word of the page which happened to be open before her. It was not printed like the rest. Less closely, and not in such a thronging mass of little black spots of letters. It was a piece of very simple poetry, in short lines and brief stanzas, and Rita was staring at its title.

The letters slowly came to her one by one, bringing behind them the first word of the title; but they seemed to Rita to be in her own brain more than on the paper. It was a hard moment for Rita.

"He made me say them one word at a time. He was so good to me! Yes, I can say them now. I know what they mean. Oh, so long ago! so long ago!"

There was no longer any doubt about it. Rita could read English. Not very easily or rapidly at first, and many of the words she came to puzzled her exceedingly. Perhaps some of them also would come back to her after a while. Some of them had always been strangers, for the very brightest little girls of seven or eight, even when they read well, and have their fathers to help them, are but at the beginning of their acquaintance with "hard words."

"I shall know what the pictures mean now. But I will not tell anybody a word about it. Only Ni-ha-be."

[to be continued.]

THE MAN WHO CARED FOR NOBODY.

BY LILLIE E. BARR.

This is the song the miller sang,
The selfish miller of Dee:
"I care for nobody, no, not I,
And nobody cares for me."
He ate and drank, and worked and slept,
Money and land had he,
But never a poorer mortal slept
Than the selfish miller of Dee.

The village maids grew good and fair,
But they grew not near his life;
His hearth-stone only held one chair—
He had no room for a wife.
No woman's footstep, quick and light,
Came down the silent stair
To bless him every morn and night
With kisses unaware.

The village lads and lasses knew
The charm of the old mill-race;
Oh, what a happy little crew
Oft made it their playing-place!
But none of them climbed the miller's knee
When the evening shades fell dim;
He cared for nobody, no, not