the height again, for there he
knew lay the road of his goal. Again and again he tapped the solid
rock or the scant earth about it for a response to that magical tip
upon his rod; and now, as the second day lightened the gulch, the
response came.

The staff forsook his hand, as it had been a creature of volition, and
stood upright upon a smooth-faced bowlder. It needed all the man's
strength to wrest it thence, and, grasping it securely, he carefully
descended, for the last time, the precipitous wall. Always the staff
tugged at his grasp, seeking the earth, but he carried it still toward
a clump of gnarled trees which appeared to him like the faces of
long-lost friends. It seemed to him that in all the half century since
he looked upon them, neither branch nor twig had altered. So had they
been on that sad day when the last of the padres had brought him
hither and shown them to him. Beneath their roots lay the secret he
had kept so well.

But the cave--what had become of that? And the stout shaft of hewn
timber which led below into the heart of earth?

"Alas! I deceive myself. I have forgotten, for I am old; not young as
I seemed to me. I have come in vain," he complained, in his thought;
and with a gesture of despair, in his hunger and weariness, the
shepherd sank upon the ground and dropped his face on his breast.

Long he sat thus, till there came to him upon the silence the answer
no call could have awaked. He began to hear sounds. The creeping of
some heavy body amid the chaparral, coming nearer, more distinct. Some
wild shrubs sheltered him from sight, and, peering through their
twigs, he watched in breathless silence. Ah! Reward!

It was Ferd who approached, as cautiously as if he were conscious of
those gleaming eyes behind the mesquite, and who, turning in his path,
entered a point among the trees which even Pedro had not suspected of
leading any whither.

It was now the Indian's part to creep after this crawling creature;
and he did so as swiftly, almost as silently, as if he were the
dwarf's mere shadow. Always he kept a screen of leaves between them,
less needed soon, as the unconscious guide led the way out of the
sunlight into the depths of gloom. The cave at last!

But the half-wit, Ferd? Had he guessed its secret?

On and on, it seemed interminably. Now and then the dwarf would pause
and listen, but at every halt there was utter silence behind him. Then
onward again, and at length into a spaci