er the way you've kept the faith, so to
speak. Oh, now, sit down! You're not going yet, are you? And after
such a walk as it is from your house here, too!"

"I came down by the trail, Mrs. Horton." And then I told her about
Guard, thus accounting for the gun, which I had caught her glancing
at, once or twice, rather curiously.

"Young dogs are foolish," was her comment, when she had heard the
story. "If he was older, I should tell you not to be a mite worried,
but as he's a young one, it's different. I've known a young dog to get
on a hot trail, and follow it until he was completely lost. My father
lost a fine deerhound that way once. The dog got on the trail of a
buck, and last we ever heard of him he was twenty miles away, and
still going. I do hope you won't have such bad luck with your dog."

I bade good-by to Mrs. Horton, and started homeward, again taking the
trail through the ravine. I was not much cheered by her words in
regard to Guard, and heavily depressed by the knowledge that Mr.
Horton had, after all, beaten Mr. Wilson and Jessie in his start for
town--though what difference it could make, either way, until the Land
Office was open in the morning no one could have told. Being troubled,
I walked slowly, this time, with my eyes on the ground. Half-way
through the ravine I came to a point where a break in the walls let in
the sunlight. Through this low, ragged depression the light was
streaming in in a long, brilliant shaft as I approached the spot. The
warm, bright column of golden light had so strange an effect, lighting
up the gray rocks and the moist, reeking pathway, that I paused to
admire it. "If it were only a rainbow, now," I thought, "I should look
under the end of it, there, for a bag of gold." My eyes absently
followed the column of light to the point where it seemed suddenly to
end in the darkness of the ravine, and I uttered a startled cry. Under
the warm, bright light I saw the distinct impression of a dog's foot.
It was as clearly defined in the oozy reek as it would have been had
some one purposely taken a cast of it, but after the first start, I
reflected that it did not necessarily follow that the print was made
by Guard. Still, examination showed that it might well be his.
Searching farther, I found more tracks--above the break in the wall,
but none in the ravine below it. The footprints had been a good deal
marred by my own as I came down the ravine, and, what I thought most
singular,