hill shaped like a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is
it like, Jim?"

"Score one against culture," said I. "I'll know it when I see it."
Goodloe was looking at old Rundle's document when he ripped out a most

uncollegiate swear-word.
"Come here," he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight.

"Look at that," he said, laying his finger against it.
On the blue paper--a thing I had never noticed before--I saw stand out

in white letters the word and figures : "Malvern, 1898."
"What about it?" I asked.

"It's the water-mark," said Goodloe. "The paper was manufactured in
1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable

fraud."
"Oh, I don't know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain,

uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to
perpetrate a swindle."

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He
dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me.

"I've often told you you were a fool," he said. "You have let
yourself be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon

me."
"How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you ?"

"By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have discovered serious flaws
in your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you

to avoid. And," he continued, "I have been put to expense that I
could ill afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with

it."
I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dish-

water.
"Goodloe Banks," I said, "I care not one parboiled navy bean for your

education. I always barely tolerated it in any one, and I despised it
in you. What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to

yourself and a bore to your friends. Away," I said--"away with your
water-marks and variations! They are nothing to me. They shall not

deflect me from the quest."
I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped

like a pack-saddle.
"I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for the treasure.

Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a water-
mark or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer.

Decide."
A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was

the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.
"I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool

would pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a
fool, Jim. I leave you to your fate."

He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted
his glasses nervously, and flew away in a cloud of dust.

After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new grass, I
crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar-

brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a pack-saddle.
It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many

birds, so many butter-flies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such
winged and stinged beasts of the air and fields.

I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from base to summit.
I found an absoluteabsence of signs relating to buried treasure.

There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of
the evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in

the document of old man Rundle.
I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. Suddenly, out of

the cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a
tributary small stream ran into the Alamito River.

And there I was started to see what I took to be a wild man, with
unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with

brilliant wings.
"Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and wondered how he had

strayed so far from seats of education and learning.
And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near

the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha
Mangum plucking wild flowers.

She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew
her I saw her face--which was the color of the white keys of a new

piano--turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the
gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass.

"I knew you would come, Jim," she said clearly. "Father wouldn't let
me write, but I knew you would come.

What followed you may guess--there was my wagon and team just across
the river.

I've often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he
can't use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to

others, where does it come in?
For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in

a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automaticplayer, and a good
start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.

And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in
places where they cannot be found.

But who cares for that? Who cares--who cares?
TO HIM WHO WAITS

The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual
animation.

The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that
had strayed down to the river's edge, and, not having a ferry ticket,

had to stop there. The bijou mountains were denselywooded and were
infested by ferocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced

the summer transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, a
macadamized road ran between the green skirt of the hills and the

foamy lace of the river's edge. A dim path wound from the comfortable
road up a rocky height to the hermit's cave. One mile upstream was

the Viewpoint Inn, to which summer folk from the city came; leaving
cool, electric-fanned apartments that they might be driven about in

burning sunshine, shrieking, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged
Modreds bearing the blankest of shields.

Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the
personal touch that shall endear you to the hero.

A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair curling at the
ends, dramatic eyes, and a forked brown beard like those that were

imposed upon the West some years ago by self-appointed "divine
healers" who succeeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture

appeared to be kind of gunny-sacking cut and made into a garment that
would have made the fortune of a London tailor. His long, well-shaped

fingers, delicate nose, and poise of manner raised him high above the
class of hermits who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in their

caves in spots indicated by rude crosses chipped in the stone wall
above.

The hermit's home was not altogether a cave. The cave was an addition
to the hermitage, which was a rude hut made of poles daubed with clay

and covered with the best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing.
In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a rustic

bookcase made of unplaned poplar planks, and a table formed of a
wooden slab laid across two upright pieces of granite--something

between the furniture of a Druid temple and that of a Broadway
beefsteak dungeon. Hung against the walls were skins of wild animals

purchased in the vicinity of Eighth Street and University Place, New
York.

The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There the hermit cooked
his meals on a rude stone hearth. With infinitepatience and an old

axe he had chopped natural shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood
his stores of flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking-

powder, soda-mint tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo Emulsion for
chaps and roughness of the hands and face.