e card players! I'd like to meet them. I'd get even with them
for stealing my watch and diamond!"

"Maybe you'll have a chance, when we round up Annister."

"If we ever do. But I imagine he's too slick a criminal to be caught."

"We'll see," said Roy.

"What would you like to do this afternoon?" asked De Royster, when the
meal was finished. "I can show you some sights if you'd like to see
them."

"I sure would. I haven't had much time so far. There wasn't a great
deal to see in that tenement."

"Then we'll go up to Bronx Park. We can make a quick trip in the
subway."

"That's the place I thought was a tunnel, and I was wondering when we
would come to the end," and Roy laughed at the memory of his natural
mistake.

The two friends had a good time in the Park, looking at the animals.
The herd of buffalo interested Roy very much, as did the elephants,
tigers, and other beasts from tropical countries, for he had never seen
any before, since no circuses ever came to Painted Stone, nor anywhere
in that vicinity.

"You haven't got any of these out West; have you?" asked Mortimer De
Royster, with a New Yorker's usual pride in the big Zoo.

"No, and we don't want 'em."

"Why not?"

"They'd stampede the cattle in seven counties. What would a drove of
steers or a band of horses do if they saw one of them elephants coming
at 'em, so's they couldn't tell which end was the tail? Or one of them
long-necked giraffes? Why, those giraffes would starve out our way.
There's no trees tall enough for 'em to eat their breakfast from."

They went into the reptile house, and the snakes fascinated Roy. He
paused before a glass box of rattlers.

"There's something we've got out West," he said, "and we'd give a good
deal not to have 'em. We lose lots of cattle from snake-bites--those
ugly rattlers! I don't like to look at 'em! I nearly stepped on one
once, and he stuck his fangs in my boot."

"What did you do?"

"Stepped on it and killed it. Come on; let's look at something more
pleasant."

They spent the rest of the day in the Park, and returned to the hotel
that evening.

For about a week nothing occurred. Mortimer De Royster took Roy for
occasional pleasure trips, including one jaunt to Coney Island, where
the boy from the ranch had his first glimpse of the ocean. The big
waves, and the immense expanse of water, astonished him more than
anything he had seen in New York.

"I never knew there was so muc