gerly.

"Yes; come as often as you can spare the time. Must you go now? Shall I
have Otto bring the car and drive you around to your camp?"

Ballard promptly refused to put the chauffeur to the trouble. It was
only a little more than a mile in the direct line from the house on the
knoll to the point where the river broke through the foothill hogback,
and the night was fine and starlit. After the day of hard riding he
should enjoy the walk.

Elsa did not go with him when he went to say good-night to Miss Cauffrey
and to his host. He left her sitting in the hammock, and found her still
there a few minutes later when he came back to say that he must make his
acknowledgments to her father through her. "I can't find him, and no one
seems to know where he is," he explained.

She rose quickly and went to the end of the portico to look down a
second tree-shadowed avenue skirting the mountainward slope of the
knoll.

"He must have gone to the laboratory; the lights are on," she said; and
then with a smile that thrilled him ecstatically: "You see what your
footing is to be at Castle 'Cadia. Father will not make company of you;
he expects you to come and go as one of us."

With this heart-warming word for his leave-taking Ballard sought out the
path to which she directed him and swung off down the hill to find the
trail, half bridle-path and half waggon road, which led by way of the
river's windings to the outlet canyon and the camp on the outer mesa.

When he was but a little distance from the house he heard the _pad pad_
of soft footfalls behind him, and presently a great dog of the St.
Bernard breed overtook him and walked sedately at his side. Ballard
loved a good dog only less than he loved a good horse, and he stopped to
pat the St. Bernard, talking to it as he might have talked to a human
being.

Afterward, when he went on, the dog kept even pace with him, and would
not go back, though Ballard tried to send him, coaxing first and then
commanding. To the blandishments the big retriever made his return in
kind, wagging his tail and thrusting his huge head between Ballard's
knees in token of affection and loyal fealty. To the commands he was
entirely deaf, and when Ballard desisted, the dog took his place at one
side and one step in advance, as if half impatient at his temporary
master's waste of time.

At the foot-bridge crossing the river the dog ran ahead and came back
again, much as if he were a scout pioneering