cene of his death. He appeared in a sheep camp at night,
sending the herders up the tallest trees in terror, and scattered the
flock all over a wide-spreading mountain. The herders spent the best
part of a week in gathering the lost sheep, but after the most thorough
search of which they were capable, some fifty odd were still missing.
When the superintendent came around on his monthly tour of inspection,
the herders told him the story of the lost sheep, and he did not know
whether to believe it or suspect the herders of illicit traffic in
mutton.

Knowing the mountain well, however, and having in mind some places
which might easily be overlooked by the herders, the superintendent
concluded to make an attempt to clear up the mystery for his own
satisfaction. For two or three days he sought in vain for the trail of
the missing sheep, visiting several likely places unknown to the
herders, and he was about to give up the search when his mind pulled
out of a dusty pigeon-hole of memory a faded picture of a queer nook in
the mountain, into which he had stumbled many years before in chase of
a wounded deer. More for the sake of seeing if he could find the place
again than in hope of solving the sheep mystery, he renewed his search,
and, at the end of a day's riding over the spurs of the mountain and up
and down ravines, he recognized the slope down which he had chased the
wounded deer, and saw upon it the hoof prints of sheep not quite
obliterated by wind and rain.

At the bottom of the slope was a small flat seemingly hemmed in on
three sides by steep walls. At the upper end, however, behind a thick
grove of pines, was a break in one of the side walls leading to an
enclosed _cienega_, an emerald gem set deep in the mountain, as though
a few acres of ground had sunk bodily some fifty feet, forming a pit in
which water had collected and remained impounded until it broke an
outlet through the lower wall.

When the superintendent reached the entrance to this sunken meadow, an
opening perhaps thirty yards wide, he noticed a well worn path across
it from wall to wall, and a glance told him that the path had been
beaten by a bear pacing to and fro. Looking closely at this beaten
trail, he saw that the footprints were large and that one paw of the
bear was malformed. Old Clubfoot without doubt.

Huddled in silent terror close to the farther wall of the little valley
were about forty sheep, and near the beaten path were th