Ida, inquiringly. "What do you mean to do?"

Weston saw that she was interested, and he was still young enough to
be willing to discuss his own plans and projects--though for that
matter one comes across older men who can talk of nothing else.

"This country is full of gold and silver," he said. "Other men strike
it now and then, and I really don't see why I shouldn't."

"When they do, haven't they usually to sell it for almost nothing to
somebody who gets up a company? Besides, do you know anything about
prospecting?"

Weston laughed.

"A little. It's my one dissipation; and it's rather an expensive one.
You have to work for months to save enough to buy a camp outfit and
provisions, and if you mean to stay any time in the ranges you have to
hire a horse. Then you come back in rags with a bagful of specimens
that prove to be of no use at all; and you go to work again."

"You have done that often?"

"Three or four times."

"Then," asked Ida, "isn't it foolish to go back again?"

Weston looked at her a moment hesitatingly, and then made a little
gesture of deprecation.

"It sounds absurd, of course, but I have a fancy that if I keep it up
long enough I shall strike gold. You see I'm a water-finder, anyway."

"A water-finder?"

Weston nodded.

"It's an old English idea. Water evidently used to be scarcer there,
and even now there are places where good wells aren't plentiful. You
go along with a hazel twig, and it dips when you cross water running
underground. That is, if you have the gift in you. Anybody can't do
it. You think that quite foolish, don't you?"

Ida really did, though she did not seem to admit it.

"Have you ever tried the gift out here?" she asked.

"On the prairie, quite often. A good deal of it is burnt up and dry. I
generally found water."

"You turned the--power--to account? I mean--you made--money out of
it?"

There was a sudden change in Weston's face.

"No," he said, "I never took a cent."

"But why?"

"Well," replied the man slowly, "my mother had some old-world belief,
and she said it was a special gift. She knew I had it. She said a
thing of that kind should never be used for money."

"But haven't all those who claimed special powers--priests, magicians,
medicine-men--always been willing to sell them?"

Her companion's eyes twinkled.

"Well, I dare say they have. Still, you see, it's possible that they
never really had the gifts they claimed at all. Now I--can--find