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And, half circling this enchanting spot upon the left, there stood the ranch-house itself.

How far back none knew, its adobe blocks had been set one upon another to form its monstrous walls. All traces of their distinction had been long since lost, smoothed and blended by the erosion of the elements.

The house was irregular, full of great rooms and passage-ways and sudden turnings, of mysterious and unexpected nooks and corners. In the centre of the half-circle which it formed around the spring and the cottonwoods, two great doors opened inward, taking the stranger abruptly into a room so huge—so high, so wide, so deep—that he invariably caught his breath, and if he were a man of parts with sensibilities, he stood in amaze before its beauties.

Its hard earth floor was covered to every corner with Indian rugs in staring black-and-white, every one of which in its beautiful design, its size, its thickness, was worth a pocket full of gold. On its walls yet other rugs and blankets were stretched between the long, deep rifts that answered for windows, but these were bright with colour—flaming reds and golds and the sharp clear contrast of the blacks that only the Indian weavers know so well how to use. Here and there among these striking panels there hung a picture or two—and again the stranger stared, for one was the Mona Lisa with her ever entrancing smile, and one was Psyche at Spring in the exquisite lights and tints of April,