d shading his eyes with his hand scanned the
plain, but only the warm shimmer of sun-heated earth appeared. Nothing
living could be seen. What ought he to do about it? Was there any way he
might find out the owner and restore the lost property?

Pondering thus, his eyes divided between the distance and the glittering
whip-handle, they came to the water-hole; and Brownleigh dismounted, his
thoughts still upon the little whip.

"It's very strange, Billy. I can't make out a theory that suits me," he
mused aloud. "If any one has been riding out this way and lost it, will
they perhaps return and look for it? Yet if I leave it where I found it
the sand might drift over it at any time. And surely, in this sparsely
settled country, I shall be able to at least hear of any strangers who
might have carried such a foolish little thing. Then, too, if I leave it
where I found it some one might steal it. Well, I guess we'll take it
with us, Billy; we'll hear of the owner somewhere some time no doubt."

The horse answered with a snort of satisfaction as he lifted his moist
muzzle from the edge of the water and looked contentedly about.

The missionary unstrapped his saddle and flung it on the ground,
unfastening the bag of "corn chop" and spreading it conveniently before
his dumb companion. Then he set about gathering a few sticks from near
at hand and started a little blaze. In a few minutes the water was
bubbling cheerfully in his little folding tin cup for a cup of tea, and
a bit of bacon was frying in a diminutive skillet beside it. Corn bread
and tea and sugar came from the capacious pockets of the saddle. Billy
and his missionary made a good meal beneath the wide bright quiet of the
sky.

When the corn chop was finished Billy let his long lashes droop lower
and lower, and his nose go down and down until it almost touched the
ground, dreaming of more corn chop, and happy in having his wants
supplied. But his master, stretched at full length upon the ground with
hat drawn over his eyes, could not lose himself in sleep for a second.
His thoughts were upon the jewelled whip, and by and by he reached his
hand out for it, and shoving back his hat lay watching the glinting of
lights within the precious heart of the topaz, as the sun caught and
tangled its beams in the sharp facets of the cutting. He puzzled his
mind to know how the whip came to be in the desert, and what was meant
by it. One reads life by details in that wide and lo