Helen stopped short and sat down
on a hummock of sand.

"What's the matter little girl? You seem sort o' done up this mornin',"
Uncle Sid dropped beside her with a sounding slump. "There! here I be!
If I didn't ring, it ain't because I ain't hollow."

He unfolded a paper bag and drawing forth some formidable sandwiches
passed one to Helen and began eating one himself. The sandwiches
disposed of, he again investigated the bag. This time he brought out two
large oranges.

"They do one thing shipshape in this country." He was eyeing Helen
keenly while tearing the rind from his orange. "They do up water in
mighty neat shape, but they do charge for it though. That's what they
do!" he rattled on. "These yellow water-balls cost me five cents apiece,
they did!" He parted the segments carefully, anxious lest a drop of the
juice should be wasted. Again his eyes rested thoughtfully on Helen's
somber face.

"What's the trouble, Helen?"

Helen's answer was accompanied by a blended look of assent to Uncle
Sid's assumption and a humorous denial of it.

"One is often absent minded over troubles that can't be explained even
to one's best friends."

"Well," Uncle Sid was not wholly satisfied, "perhaps by the time I'm
your best friend, you'll be ready to tell me."

"I think that may be very soon," said Helen soberly, as she finished her
orange.

"Have another?" Uncle Sid held out the bag cordially.

Helen was morally certain that Uncle Sid's New England thrift was
dwelling on the five cents apiece; but she took the proffered orange.
Uncle Sid rose clumsily to his feet.

"Now for the Christopher Sawyer."

The mist was rapidly clearing. Without visible means of locomotion,
wisps of fog rose from the ground in the distance, trailed along like a
sea-bird rising from the water, then melted in the air. They were
standing on the edge of a mesa. Below them, tall cottonwoods rose in a
straggling, sinuous line, their trunks matted with clinging vines, their
branches loaded almost to the breaking point with clusters of parasitic
plants. A line of shrubs, filling in between the trees, were bowed in a
mat of tangled verdure that was dotted and sprinkled with rainbow
colors. White-rimmed ditches appeared from behind projecting
promontories of yellow sand, crawled under wire fences whose crooked,
ghostly sticks, like the legs of some gigantic centipede, straggled
around patches of wheat and barley. Outside these patches of green,
adobe