we can find a tree strong enough to stand the strain of
two such rascals at once."

"I tell you a better scheme," said Jeems Howell with a twinkle in his
eye. "Get a twig of the tree and touch 'em up with that."

"That's the idea," agreed Jim. "Bring me the switches, Juarez."

"Aye, aye, sir," said Juarez cheerfully, and he started on his
commission. The implied indignity of a switching was too much for the
two youths. They would have much preferred to be hanged, so they
prepared to leave home immediately and without due notice. Father
Jim's grasp relaxed for a moment, and, with a wrench, both boys tore
themselves loose and sped away in the darkness, and from this outer
darkness they hurled remarks and pieces of dirt and small stones at
the three about the campfire, just as other small bad boys would do;
but the grown-ups paid no attention to the culprits, merely pulled
their sombreros down around their ears and began a diligent study of
the diagram of the Lost Mine. So absorbed were they after a while
that they forgot the outlanders, when they crept into camp.

"Let's see," said Juarez. "Where are we on this diagram?"

"We passed by the pine tree with the cross cut on one side," said
Jeems, "the other day."

"That crooked line below there is the trail in this valley," said Jo,
who was too interested to keep at a safe distance.

"If it is anything crooked, you and Tom ought to be experts," said
Jim, looking keenly at the two ex-fugitives. They said nothing by way
of retort, considering that silence was the better part of wit on this
particular occasion.

"If that line is a path," said Juarez, "those drawings on either side
represent buildings of some sort."

"But how about the figures at the bottom of the diagram?" inquired
Jeems. "I can't make them out."

"Four hundred+1500-30," read Jim. "I can add it up if that will do any
good."

"The best thing we can do," said Jeems, the philosopher, "is to go to
bed and tackle this proposition in the morning."

This the boys did, but it was a hard thing for them to get to sleep,
so busy were their brains, and they all dreamed diagram, mysterious
combinations of figures and lines. When they awoke the next morning,
it was with the same happy sense of anticipation that the small boy
wakes up on the morning of the glorious Fourth.

As soon as it was light enough to see, the Frontier Boys started out
to solve the location of the Lost Mine. Each one had a copy of the