s awakened late in the afternoon by the sensation of a strong pair
of young arms around his shoulders, and the sound of Wallace Carpenter's
fresh voice crying in his ears:

"Wake up, wake up! you Indian! You've been asleep all day, and I've been
waiting here all that time. I want to hear about it. Wake up, I say!"

Thorpe rolled to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed, and smiled
uncertainly. Then as the sleep drained from his brain, he reached out
his hand.

"You bet we did 'em, Wallace," said he, "but it looked like a hard
proposition for a while."

"How was it? Tell me about it!" insisted the boy eagerly. "You don't
know how impatient I've been. The clerk at the Land Office merely told
me it was all right. How did you fix it?"

While Thorpe washed and shaved and leisurely freshened himself, he
detailed his experiences of the last week.

"And," he concluded gravely, "there's only one man I know or ever heard
of to whom I would have considered it worth while even to think of
sending that telegram, and you are he. Somehow I knew you'd come to the
scratch."

"It's the most exciting thing I ever heard of," sighed Wallace drawing a
full breath, "and I wasn't in it! It's the sort of thing I long for. If
I'd only waited another two weeks before coming down!"

"In that case we couldn't have gotten hold of the money, remember,"
smiled Thorpe.

"That's so." Wallace brightened. "I did count, didn't I?"

"I thought so about ten o'clock this morning," Thorpe replied.

"Suppose you hadn't stumbled on their camp; suppose Injin Charley hadn't
seen them go up-river; suppose you hadn't struck that little mill town
JUST at the time you did!" marvelled Wallace.

"That's always the way," philosophized Thorpe in reply. "It's the old
story of 'if the horse-shoe nail hadn't been lost,' you know. But we got
there; and that's the important thing."

"We did!" cried the boy, his enthusiasm rekindling, "and to-night we'll
celebrate with the best dinner we ran buy in town!"

Thorpe was tempted, but remembered the thirty dollars in his pocket, and
looked doubtful.

Carpenter possessed, as part of his volatile enthusiastic temperament,
keen intuitions.

"Don't refuse!" he begged. "I've set my heart on giving my senior
partner a dinner. Surely you won't refuse to be my guest here, as I was
yours in the woods!"

"Wallace," said Thorpe, "I'll go you. I'd like to dine with you; but
moreover, I'll confess, I should like to eat a