e raised himself slightly on his elbow
and stared at McArthur, looming large in the gray dawn, with a skull
carried carefully in both hands.

"Ah, I'm glad to find you awake!" He tiptoed across the floor.

His clothing was wrinkled with the damp, night air, and his face looked
haggard in the cold light, but the fire of enthusiasm burned undimmed
behind his spectacles.

"Congratulate me!"

"I do--what for?"

"My dear sir, if I can prove to the satisfaction of scientific sceptics
that this cranium is not pathological, I shall have bounded in a single
day--night--bounded from comparative obscurity to the pinnacle of fame!
Undoubtedly--beyond question--a race of giants existed in North
America----"

"Pardon me," Ralston interrupted his husky eloquence; "but where have you
been all night?"

"Ah, where have I _not_ been? Walking--walking under the stars! Under the
stimulus of success, I have covered miles with no feeling of fatigue. Have
you ever experienced, my dear sir, the sensation which comes from the
realization of a life-dream?"

"Not yet," Ralston replied prosaically. "Where was your horse?"

"Ah, yes, my horse. Where _is_ my horse? I asked myself that question each
time that I stopped to remove one of the poisonous spines of the cactus
from my feet. Whether my horse lost me or I lost my horse, I am unable to
say. I left him grazing in a gulch, and was not again able to locate the
gulch. I wandered all night--or until Fate guided me into a barbed wire
fence, where, as you will observe, I tore my trousers. I followed the
fence, and here I am--I and my companion"--McArthur patted the skull
lovingly--"this giant--the slayer of mastodons--whose history lies
concealed in 'the dark backward and abysm of time'!"

As he looked into Ralston's non-committal eyes with his own burning orbs,
he realized that great joy, like great sorrow, is something which cannot
well be shared.

"Forgive me," he said with hurt dignity; "I have again forgotten that you
have no interest in such things."

"You are mistaken. I wanted to hear."

After McArthur had retired to his pneumatic mattress, Ralston lay
wide-eyed, more mystified than before. Had Bear Chief's eyes deceived him,
or was McArthur the cleverest of rogues?

Breakfast was done when Ralston said:

"Will you be good enough to step into the bunk-house, Mr. McArthur?"

Something in his voice chilled the sensitive man. Ralston, whom he greatly
admired, always had been