barked; and Croesus--with an indignant jerk of his
head, and a flirt of his tail--started forward. At the fork of the trail,
he paused. The two men waited with breathless interest. With an air of
accepting the responsibility placed upon him, the burro whirled and
trotted down the narrow path that led to the floor of the canyon below.
Laughing, the men followed--but far enough in the rear to permit their
leader to choose his own way when they should reach the wagon road at the
foot of the mountain wall. Without an instant's hesitation, Croesus turned
down the road--quickening his pace, almost, into a trot.

"By George!" ejaculated the novelist, "he acts like he knew where he was
going."

"He's taking you at your word," returned the artist. "Look at him go!
Evidently, he's still under the inspiration of your oratory."

The burro had broken into a ridiculous, little gallop that caused the
frying-pan and coffee-pot, lashed on the outside of the pack, to rattle
merrily. Splashing through the creek, he disappeared in the dark shadow of
a thicket of alders and willows, where the road crosses a tiny rivulet
that flows from a spring a hundred yards above. Climbing out of this
gloomy hollow, the road turns sharply to the left, and the men hurried on
to overtake their four-footed guide before he should be too long out of
their sight. Just at the top of the little rise, before rounding the turn,
they stopped. A few feet to the right of the road, with his nose at an
old gate, stood Croesus. Nor would he heed Czar's bark commanding him to
go on.

On the other side of the fence, an old and long neglected apple orchard, a
tumble-down log barn, and the wreck of a house with the fireplace and
chimney standing stark and alone, told the story. The place was one of
those old ranches, purchased by the Power Company for the water rights,
and deserted by those who once had called it home. From the gate, ancient
wagon tracks, overgrown with weeds, led somewhere around the edge of the
orchard and were lost in the tangle of trees and brush on its lower side.

The two men looked at each other in laughing surprise. The burro, turning
his head, gazed at them over his shoulder, inquiringly, as much as to say,
"Well, what's the matter now? Why don't you come along?"

"When in doubt, ask Croesus," said the artist, gravely.

Conrad Lagrange calmly opened the gate.

Promptly, the burro trotted ahead. Following the ancient weed-grown
tracks, he le