at Fort Sherman to visit Mrs. Creve, who was giddy with joy over the
wholesome change in Paul. She, too, wrote a woman's letter concerning that
visit, to the colonel, which cleared a crowd of shadows from his lonely
hearth.

Thence again to Pendleton came the seekers, and Paul gathered in his
lines, but found nothing; so cast them forth again. But through all these
distant elaborations of the search, in his own mind he saw the old man
creeping away by some near, familiar trail and lying hid in some warm
valley in the hills, his prison and his home.

It was now the last week in March. The travelers' bags were in the office,
the carriage at the door, when a letter--pigeon-holed and forgotten since
received some three weeks before--was put into Paul's hand.

I run up against your ad. in the Silver City Times [the communication
began]. If you haven't found your man yet, maybe I can put you onto the
right lead. I'm driving a jerky on the road from Mountain Home to Oriana,
but me and the old man we don't jibe any too well. I've got a sort of
disgust on me. Think I'll quit soon and go to mining. Jimmy Breen he runs
the Ferry, he can tell you all I know. Fifty miles from Mountain Home good
road can make it in one day. Yours Respecfully,

J. STRATTON.

It was in following up this belated clue that the pilgrims had come to the
Ferry inn, crossing by team from valley to valley, cutting off a great
bend of the Oregon Short Line as it traverses the Snake River desert;
those bare high plains escarped with basalt bluffs that open every fifty
miles or so to let a road crawl down to some little rope-ferry supported