“I wish we could take you with us, Bill,” I said. “I sure wish I could go,” said Bill. “Well, good-by, Bill.” “Good-by, and over the top,” said Bill, driving off. “I hate to say good-by to Bill,” said Toby and I, to each other. Thus delayed, it was twilight when we reached the old Sanctuario, famous as the Lourdes of America. Inside, its whitewashed walls displayed crutches and other implements of illness, as witness to the cures effected by the shrine. The interior as of most Mexican churches, was filled with faded paper flowers and tawdry gilt pictures of saints. Outside, twin towers and a graceful balcony, and a walled churchyard shaded by giant cottonwoods gave the church a distinction apart from all its miracles. At a brook nearby, a majestic, black-shawled Mexican madonna filled her _olla_, mildly cursing us that the fee we gave for opening the gate was no larger, lest we should realize it had been too large. Across the plaza stood a fine example of a built-up kiva or _estufa_, and nearby we dared a glance, in passing, at a morado. But we had come to see and perhaps buy rugs,--those woolly, soft blankets at which the heart of the collector leaps. During the day, however, the Santa Cruz, which divides Mexican from Indian Chimayo, had risen from the melting of snows in the mountains, and we could only feast our eyes on the lovely hill-lined valley, with its greens and mauves, its cobalt hills and blossoming apricots. There was positively no way to cross. I remembered that Bill said he too had been delayed at Pojoaque by swollen streams. But the idea of hurrying home did not occur to us, as it might have to a native. We communicated our interest in rugs to little Indian boys and handsome swart Mexicans, who stripped the floors and beds of their great-grandparents, learning that we sought antiques. We soon had a choice of the greasiest and most tattered rugs the town afforded, but nothing worth purchasing. We were on the wrong side of the river, and out of luck. Relinquishing the idea of seeing rug-weaving in process, we at last turned homeward, with a new moon menacing us over our left shoulder. Passing through a beautiful little canyon, over a road which tossed us like a catboat in a nor’easter, we again came, at dusk, to sleeping Nambé, and the brink of the stream. Toby, who was driving, plunged boldly in, without preliminary reconnoitre. We afterward agreed that here she made a tactical error. The trickle of the morning, had risen to our hubs. To make matters worse, the stream ran one way, and the ford another. We all hurled directions at the unhappy Toby. “Keep down stream!” “Follow the ford!” “Back up!” “Go ahead,--_go ahead_!”