famous author in a hammock, with Czar lying near--set out up the canyon.
For perhaps two miles, the painter followed the creek--taking here and
there from clear pool or swirling eddy a fish for his creel, and pausing
often, as he went, to enjoy--in artist fashion--the beauties of the ever
changing landscape.

The afternoon was almost gone when he finally turned back toward camp. He
had been away, already longer than he intended; but still--as all
fishermen will understand--he could not, on his way back down the stream,
refrain from casting here and there over the pools that tempted him.

The sun was touching the crest of the mountains when he had made but
little more than half the distance of his return. He had just sent his fly
skillfully over a deep pool in the shadow of a granite boulder, for what
he determined must be his last cast, when, startlingly clear and sweet,
came the tones of a violin.

A master trout leaped. The hand of the unheeding fisherman felt the tug
as the leader broke. Giving the victorious fish no thought, Aaron King
slowly reeled in his line.

There was no mistaking the pure, vibrant tones of the music to which the
man listened with amazed delight. It was the music of the, to him, unknown
violinist who lived hidden in the orange grove next door to his studio
home in Fairlands.

Chapter XV

The Forest Ranger's Story

Perhaps the motive that, in Fairlands, had restrained the artist from
seeking to know his neighbor was without force in the mountains. Perhaps
it was that, in the unconventional freedom of the hills, the man obeyed
more readily his impulse. Aaron King did not stop to question. As though
in answer to the call of that spirit which spoke in the tones of the
violin, he moved in the direction from which the music came.

Climbing out of the bed of the stream to the bench that slopes hack--a
quarter of a mile, perhaps--to the foot of the canyon wall, he found
himself in an old road that, where it once crossed the creek, had been
destroyed by the mountain floods. Wonderingly he followed the dimly marked
track that led through the chaparral toward a thicket of cedars, from
beyond which the music seemed to come. Where the road curved to find its
way through the green barrier he paused--the musician, undoubtedly, now,
was just beyond. Still acting upon the impulse of the moment, he
cautiously parted the boughs and peered through into a little, open glade
that was closed in on