"Just this way Sweetheart," clasping the tiny moccasins in a loving caress. "Tell some more. I guess the fire is going to make Kitty sleepy, by and by." "Sleep, then, if you will, Girl-Child." "And then?" "Then, when the little one was very cold and tired and lonely she remembered something: it was that she had seen her own mother lift her two hands to the sky and ask the Great Spirit for all she might need." "He always hears, doesn't He?" "He hears and answers. But sometimes the answers are what He sees is best, not what we want." "Don't sigh that way, Other Mother! S'posin' your little boy did go away. Haven't you got Gaspar and Kitty?" "Yes, little one." "Go on, then. About the little maid--just like me." "So she put her own two tiny hands up toward the sky and asked the Great Spirit to put soft shoes on her tired little feet." "And He did, didn't He?" "Surely. First the pain eased and that made her look down. And there she saw a pair of the softest moccasins that ever were made. They were of pale pink and yellow, and all dotted with dark little bead-spots; and they fitted as easily as her own dainty skin. Then the girl papoose was grateful, and she begged the Great Spirit that He would make many and many another pair of just such comfortable shoes for every other little barefoot maid in all the world. That not one single child should ever suffer what the girl papoose had suffered." "Did He?" asked Gaspar, as interested as Kitty. "Yes. Surely. The prayer of the unselfish and innocent is always granted. He sent a voice out of the sky and bade the child look all about her. So she did, and the whole wide prairie was a-bloom with more pink and yellow 'shoes' than all the children in all the earth could ever wear. They were growing right out of the hard ground, reaching up to be plucked and worn. So she cried out aloud in her gratitude: 'Oh, the moccasin flower! the moccasin flower!' and ever since then this shoe-like blossom has been beloved of all the children in the world. But, because the heat burns as well as the cold pinches, it blooms nowadays at all times and seasons of the year. A few flowers here, a few there; but quite enough for any child to find--who has the right spirit." "Kitty must have had the spirit, mustn't she, Other Mother? That day when her feets were so tired and the good Feather-man found her. 'Cause she had lots and lots of them; only she went to sleep and they all solemned down. And----" Gaspar started suddenly and held up a warning hand. His quick ear had caught the sound of approaching feet, crushing boldly through the cavern, like the tread of one who knows his way well and is coming to his own.