of rough stones
and boulders.

"Built it myself," Ferguson proclaimed, "and, by God, she drew! Never a
wisp of smoke anywhere save in the pointed channel, and that during the
big southeasters."

Daylight found himself charmed and made curious by the little man. Why
was he hiding away here in the chaparral, he and his books? He was
nobody's fool, anybody could see that. Then why? The whole affair had
a tinge of adventure, and Daylight accepted an invitation to supper,
half prepared to find his host a raw-fruit-and-nut-eater or some
similar sort of health faddest. At table, while eating rice and
jack-rabbit curry (the latter shot by Ferguson), they talked it over,
and Daylight found the little man had no food "views." He ate whatever
he liked, and all he wanted, avoiding only such combinations that
experience had taught him disagreed with his digestion.

Next, Daylight surmised that he might be touched with religion; but,
quest about as he would, in a conversation covering the most divergent
topics, he could find no hint of queerness or unusualness. So it was,
when between them they had washed and wiped the dishes and put them
away, and had settled down to a comfortable smoke, that Daylight put
his question.

"Look here, Ferguson. Ever since we got together, I've been casting
about to find out what's wrong with you, to locate a screw loose
somewhere, but I'll be danged if I've succeeded. What are you doing
here, anyway? What made you come here? What were you doing for a
living before you came here? Go ahead and elucidate yourself."

Ferguson frankly showed his pleasure at the questions.

"First of all," he began, "the doctors wound up by losing all hope for
me. Gave me a few months at best, and that, after a course in
sanatoriums and a trip to Europe and another to Hawaii. They tried
electricity, and forced feeding, and fasting. I was a graduate of about
everything in the curriculum. They kept me poor with their bills while
I went from bad to worse. The trouble with me was two fold: first, I
was a born weakling; and next, I was living unnaturally--too much work,
and responsibility, and strain. I was managing editor of the
Times-Tribune--"

Daylight gasped mentally, for the Times-Tribune was the biggest and
most influential paper in San Francisco, and always had been so.

"--and I wasn't strong enough for the strain. Of course my body went
back on me, and my mind, too, for that matter. It had to b