excitedly. "The very man I went
prospecting with last fall. He had some crazy idea in his head then
about a Cave of Gold that an old Indian whom he had cured of some
disease, he had been an army doctor once, had told him he had found in a
hidden gulch that opened into a canyon. We hunted all up and down the
canyon, into which the Indian said the gulch opened, but we couldn't
find no such gulch as the Indian described, and had to give it up. You
remember my telling you all about it, don't you, Mollie?" and Dickson
turned to his wife.

"Yes, yes," assented Mrs. Dickson eagerly. "You went on the trip while I
was away to Sacramento City and you told me all about it, when I got
back. Queer how things do turn out!"

"And so Stackpole really found the cave at last; but at the cost of his
life," and Dickson's face saddened. "Too bad!--I mean his murder; for he
was a good sort of a fellow, when he was away from liquor, but, let him
get a little whiskey down him, and he was as ugly as the devil. I reckon
that it was drink that drove him out of the army in disgrace; and I
reckon it was drink that caused his murder; for he was a very cautious
man and would have said nothing about his discovering the Cave of Gold,
especially to strangers, if he had been in his right senses--Can I, can
I see that map?" and Dickson's face suddenly lighted up. "Possibly I
know the place."

"Sure," and Mr. Conroyal turned to Thure. "Get out the map, Thure."

Thure's face reddened a little, but, turning his back to Mrs. Dickson,
he quickly, with the aid of his knife, ripped open the bosom of his
shirt, and, pulling out the map, handed it to his father, who at once
spread it out on the table in front of Dickson.

"Lot's Canyon!" Dickson cried excitedly, almost the moment his eyes fell
on the map. "Why, that's the very name we gave the canyon where we tried
to find the hidden gulch, on account of a white pillar of rock, that
Stackpole said might have been Lot's wife. And here is the very pillar
itself!" and he pointed to the little square on the map marked Lot's
Wife. "And the Big Tree! And the Devil's Slide! And Goose Neck Lake!
Every one of them names that we gave to places! I am sure that that is
the same canyon that Stackpole searched for the Cave of Gold when I was
with him," and Dickson turned an excited face to Mr. Conroyal. "It's
about a five days' tramp from here."

"That's what the dying miner said," broke in Bud eagerly.

"And do you thi