"The vestal virgins here are old men," replied Ralph, wickedly pleased to get a joke on the lady. "Oh! The Moquis are not Romans," decided Mrs Stanley. "Well, what do these old men do?" "Keep the fire burning." "What if it should go out? What would happen?" "I don't know," responded the sub-acid Thurstane. "I didn't suppose you did," said Aunt Maria pettishly. "Captain Glover, I want you to come with me." Followed by the subservient skipper, she marched to the other end of the pueblo. There was the mysterious apartment; it was not really a temple, but a sort of public hall and general lounging place; such rooms exist in the Spanish-speaking pueblos of Zuni and Laguna, and are there called _estufas_. The explorers soon discovered that the only entrance into the estufa was by a trapdoor and a ladder. Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they were awkward for skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply got on her knees and peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire directly below, and there was also a pretty strong smell of pipes of tobacco, so that she saw nothing and was stifled and disgusted. She sent Glover down, as people lower a dog into a mine where gases are suspected. After a brief absence the skipper returned and reported. "Pooty sizable room. Dark's a pocket 'n' hot's a footstove. Three or four Injuns talkin' 'n' smokin'. Scrap 'f a fire smoulder'in a kind 'f standee fireplace without any top." "That's the sacred fire," said Aunt Maria. "How many old men were watching it?" "Didn't see _any_." "They must have been there. Did you put the fire out?" "No water handy," explained the prudent Glover. "You might have--expectorated on it." "Reckon I didn't miss it," said the skipper, who was a chewer of tobacco and a dead shot with his juice. "Of course nothing happened." "Nary." "I knew there wouldn't," declared the lady triumphantly. "Well, now let us go back. We know something about the religion of these people. It is certainly a very interesting study." "Didn't appear to me much l'k a temple," ventured Glover. "Sh'd say t'was a kind 'f gineral smokin' room 'n' jawin' place. Git together there 'n' talk crops 'n' 'lections 'n' the like." "You must be mistaken," decided Aunt Maria. "There was the sacred fire." She now led the willing captain (for he was as inquisitive as a monkey) on a round of visits to the houses of the Moquis. She poked smiling through their kitchens and bedrooms, and gained more information than might have been expected concerning their spinning and weaving, cheerfully spending ten minutes in signs to obtain a single idea. "Never shear their sheep till they are dead!" she exclaimed when that fact had been gestured into her understanding. "Absurd! There's another specimen of masculine stupidity. I'll warrant you, if the women had the management of things, the good-for-nothing brutes would be sheared every day." "Jest as they be to hum," slily suggested Glover, who knew better.