They followed him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched
limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either
hand he stumped about on the sward until the crotch suddenly turned
downward.

"There's runnin' water there," announced the wizard, stabbing the
soil with his peg-leg. "I can locate a well anywhere, any place. When
I use willer for a wand it will twist in my hands till the bark peels
off. You see, I'm full of it--whatever it is. I showed you that much
with the whisker. I started in easy with you. It makes me dizzy
sometimes to foller myself. I have to be careful and let out a link
at a time, or I'd take folks right off'm their feet. Now you come
with me and keep cool--or as cool as you can, because I'm goin' to
tell you something that will give you sort of a mind-colic if you
ain't careful how you take it in."

He pegged ahead of them, led the way around behind a barn that was
skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with
excitement vibrating his streaming whiskers.

"This, now," he declared, "is just as though I took you into a
national bank, throwed open the safe door, and said: 'Gents, help
yourselves!'"

He drew a curious object out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper.
It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were
inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had
clutched the "legs" of the apple-tree wand.

"One of you lay some gold and silver down on the ground," he requested.
"I'd do it, but I ain't got a cent in my pocket."

Hiram obeyed, his expression plainly showing his curiosity.

When Mr. Bodge advanced and stood astride over the money, the cow's
horn turned downward and the whalebone strips twisted.

"It's a divinin'-rod to find buried treasure," said Mr. Bodge; "and
it's the only one in the world like it, because I made it myself,
and I wouldn't tell an angel the secret of the stuff I've plugged
in there. You see for yourself what it will do when it comes near
gold or silver."

Hiram turned a cold stare on his wistful eagerness.

"I don't know what you've got in there, nor why it acts that way,"
said the showman, "but from what I know about money, the most of it's
well taken care of by the men that own it; and just what good it's
goin' to do to play pointer-dog with that thing there, and go round
and flush loose change and savin's-banks, is more than I can figger."

Mr. Bodge merely smiled a