ne day, not long
ago, a man who was fishing on the river at a place where an eddy set in,
found a curious bottle floating, that was sealed with red wax on the
top, and seemed to contain only a piece of paper. This is the bottle,"
and as he spoke he opened a drawer of the desk, and drew out the flask
in question.

Frank took it, and turned it around. So far as he could see it was an
ordinary bottle. It contained no cork, but there were signs of sealing
wax around the top.

"Mr. Hinchman, is, I believe," the ranchman went on, "though he has been
too modest to say so himself, a gentleman of some importance in Mohave
City, which accounted for the fisherman fetching his queer find to him.
The bottle had evidently come down the great river, perhaps for one or
two hundred miles, escaping destruction from contact with rocks in a
marvelous manner, and finally falling into the hands of one who had both
the time and the curiosity to examine its sealed contents."

Colonel Haywood thereupon took up a small piece of paper from the pad of
the desk.

"This is what he found in the bottle, Frank," continued the stockman.
"It bore my address, and the name of my ranch here; so thinking that it
might be something more than a practical joke he concluded to journey
all the way across the country to see me. It was a mighty nice thing for
Mr. Hinchman to do, and something I am not apt to forget in a hurry,
either."

"Then the paper interested you, dad, it seems?" Frank remarked, eagerly.

"It certainly did, son, and I rather think you will feel the same as I
did when I tell you whose name is written at the bottom of this little
communication," the cattleman went on.

"All right, I'm ready to hear it," Frank remarked, laughingly.

"Felix Oswald!" replied his father, quickly.

The boy was indeed intensely surprised, if one could judge from his
manner.

"Your Uncle Felix, dad, who has been gone these three years, and whose
mysterious disappearance set the whole scientific world guessing. And
you say his name is there, signed to that paper found in the sealed
bottle? Well, you sure have given me a surprise. Then he's still alive?"

"He seemed to be when he wrote this," the cattleman said, reflectively;
"but as he failed to put any date on it, we can only guess how long the
bottle has been cruising down the Colorado, sucked into eddies that
might hold it for weeks or months, until a rise in the river sent it
forth again."

"Say, does