fear you are
mistaken. I have attempted several times to sink a well but never with
the slightest degree of success. I have had all the ground carefully
prospected by Figgins of Sacramento Street--he has a very big
reputation--and he assures me there isn't a drop of water anywhere
near here within two hundred feet of the surface."

"I know better," Hamar said. "Will you get your gardener--who by the
way was very rude to me just now when I spoke to him--to dig where I
tell him. I have absolute confidence in my power of divination."

The owner of the property, whom I will call Mr. B. assented, and
several gardeners, including the one who had so insulted Hamar, were
soon digging vigorously. At the depth of fifteen feet, water was
found, and, indeed, so fast did it begin to come in that within a few
minutes it had risen a foot. The onlookers were jubilant.

"I shall send an account of it to the local papers," Mr. B. remarked.
"Your fame will be spread everywhere. You have increased the value of
my property a thousandfold, I cannot tell you how grateful I am"--and
he, then and there, invited Hamar to luncheon.

After luncheon Mr. B. made him a present of a cheque--rather in excess
of the sum which Hamar had all along intended to have, and could not
have refrained from demanding much longer.

In the afternoon all the San Francisco specials were full of the
incident, and Hamar, seeing his name placarded for the first time, was
so overcome that he spent the rest of the evening in the hotel
deliberating how he could best turn his sudden notoriety to account.

At ten o'clock Kelson came in, looking somewhat fatigued, but,
nevertheless, pleased. He, too, had had adventures, and he detailed
them with so much elaboration that the other two had frequently to
tell him to "dry up."

"I began the morning," he commenced, "by accosting a very fashionably
dressed lady coming out of Bushwell's Store in Commercial Street.
Divination at once told me she was the popular widow of J.K. Bater,
the Biscuit King of Nob Hill, and that she was carrying in her big
seal-skin muff a gold hatpin mounted with an emerald butterfly, a
silver-backed hair brush, a blue enamelled scent bottle, and a
porcelain jar, all of which she had slyly 'nicked,' when no one was
looking.

"I stepped up to her, and politely raising my hat said, 'Good morning,
Mrs. Bater. I've a message for you.'

"'I don't know you,' she said eyeing me very doubtfully, 'who are