udged on, only pausing once for a half-hour
to divide the meagre remains of their store. Evening came; the sun
leaned his elbows on the horizon in front of them, leered at the
contracted visages and blinking eyes resolutely facing him, then slid
leisurely down; and night came suddenly. The boys flung themselves on
the ground and slept.

They awoke consumed with hunger and thirst. Their mouths and nostrils
were coated with the fine irritating dust of the desert, scarcely
visible but always felt. But their smarting eyes were greeted by a
refreshing sight: not a half-league before them, directly in their
course, was a lake, a lake as blue as the metallic sky above, and
lightly fringed with palms and orange-trees. Beyond was a forest of
silver leaves--an olive orchard.

"A Mission!" exclaimed Roldan, and even Adan sprang to his feet and
marched westward with some enthusiasm. But alas! although they trudged
with dogged persistence for fully a league, striving to forget the
gnawing at their vitals in the exquisite prospect filling the eye, the
lake seemed to march ahead of them, in perfect time with their weary
feet. Suddenly the two boys paused and faced each other.

"This accursed desert is bewitched," said Roldan. His face was white,
but more with anger than fear; for the first time in his life he
realised the helplessness of man when at the mercy of nature, and he
did not like the sensation. He had a strong, and by this time, well
developed instinct to govern, to bend others to his will, and he swore
now that he would walk out of this desert unharmed if only for the
pleasure of cheating a force mightier than himself. He turned and
looked at the sun.

"We have been going in a wrong direction," he said. "That lake has been
shifting gradually toward the southwest, and taken us nearly a league
out of our course. The first thing we know we will be in Baja
California, where there is nothing but deserts, and they are all on
mountain tops. We must strike north again. I am sure that last night we
were due west of Los Angeles."

"But the lake? the Mission?"

"I do not believe there is any lake. There are things you and I do not
understand in this world--although we are learning--and I believe that
this strange desert has the power to make scenes like the theatres they
who have travelled tell us of. Be sure that lake will disappear like
the city."

They turned north in order to get in line with the sun; and out of the
tail