were better able to protect themselves there.

"In the country districts the ghouls and prowlers had been less in
evidence, for I found many villages and towns untouched by fire. But
they were filled by the pestilential dead, and I passed by without
exploring them. It was near Lathrop that, out of my loneliness, I picked
up a pair of collie dogs that were so newly free that they were urgently
willing to return to their allegiance to man. These collies accompanied
me for many years, and the strains of them are in those very dogs there
that you boys have to-day. But in sixty years the collie strain has
worked out. These brutes are more like domesticated wolves than anything
else."

Hare-Lip rose to his feet, glanced to see that the goats were safe,
and looked at the sun's position in the afternoon sky, advertising
impatience at the prolixity of the old man's tale. Urged to hurry by
Edwin, Granser went on.

"There is little more to tell. With my two dogs and my pony, and riding
a horse I had managed to capture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on
to a wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite. In the great hotel
there I found a prodigious supply of tinned provisions. The pasture was
abundant, as was the game, and the river that ran through the valley was
full of trout. I remained there three years in an utter loneliness that
none but a man who has once been highly civilized can understand. Then
I could stand it no more. I felt that I was going crazy. Like the dog,
I was a social animal and I needed my kind. I reasoned that since I had
survived the plague, there was a possibility that others had survived.
Also, I reasoned that after three years the plague germs must all be
gone and the land be clean again.

[Illustration: With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out 144]

"With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out. Again I crossed the San
Joaquin Valley, the mountains beyond, and came down into Livermore
Valley. The change in those three years was amazing. All the land had
been splendidly tilled, and now I could scarcely recognize it, 'such was
the sea of rank vegetation that had overrun the agricultural handiwork
of man. You see, the wheat, the vegetables, and orchard trees had always
been cared for and nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender. The
weeds and wild bushes and such things, on the contrary, had always been
fought by man, so that they were tough and resistant. As a result, when
the hand of m