loom at the
non-arrival of Scott and Polly. Jimmy Adams was reported much improved.

"That Chinaman doesn't cook any more," confided Mrs. Van to Clara. "He's
had a rise in life and he just sits and meditates. Awful people to
meditate--the Chinese. What they find to think about I can't see, but it
seems to make 'em happy."

Clara's mind, however, was upon the absent. "I can't see what could have
happened to them. They didn't fall in with Angel Gonzales, that we know,"
she said. "I'm dreadfully worried about them."

"Hello!" It was O'Grady's voice. "Here comes horses down the road--two of
them. I believe it's our folks." And he bolted out into the moonlight,
followed by the others.

It was, and a more exhausted and bedraggled couple it would have been hard
to find.

"Look like a pair of forty-niners," said O'Grady, "on the last lap of the
trip."

Scott rolled out of the saddle while Hard lifted Polly to her feet.

"Coffee!" whispered the girl. "Is it really coffee that I smell?"

"Gracious, I believe they're starving," gasped Mrs. Van, running into the
house.

"All we've had to-day is a cake of chocolate and some lumps of sugar,"
said Scott, briefly. "Look after the horses, O'Grady, will you? They've
had it pretty rough, too."

He was lame and sore from his fall of the day before, and tired and hungry
from the day's discomforts, but he managed to say enough to give them an
idea of what had happened.

"After I climbed out of the arroyo," he said, "I didn't know which way to
go. If those fellows had got Polly I wanted to go after them; if they
hadn't--well, I didn't dare take the chance that they hadn't. I was
pelting down the trail like a madman when I heard her voice calling me
from up the trail.

"We got on the horses and began climbing again, pretty well pleased with
our luck, but the horses were all in. They'd been at it since early
morning, climbing most of the time, and I saw that they weren't going to
make it. So I picked a good-looking spot near the head of the stream that
we'd been following, and we camped there for the night, ate the rest of
our sandwiches, and rolled up in our blankets. It wasn't very comfortable
but it was a case of needs must.

"In the morning I set out to find the trail again. It had pretty well
disappeared--choked up by the brush. We fought our way through it all
morning and finally lost it; struck out higher up on the mountain and came
out on the barren side near the top. T