"Then you don't want to see it any more, or even remember you ever saw
it," said Mr. Hamlin, carefully tearing the note into small pieces and
letting them drift from the windows like blown blossoms.

"But, I say, Jack! look here; I don't understand! You say you have
already seen this woman, and yet"--

"I HAVEN'T seen her," said Jack, composedly, turning from the window.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you and I, Fred, are going to drop this fooling right here
and leave this place for Frisco by first stage to-morrow, and--that I
owe you that dinner."


CHAPTER IV


When the stage for San Francisco rolled away the next morning with Mr.
Hamlin and the editor, the latter might have recognized in the occupant
of a dust-covered buggy that was coming leisurely towards them the tall
figure, long beard, and straight duster of his late visitor, Mr. James
Bowers. For Mr. Bowers was on the same quest that the others had just
abandoned. Like Mr. Hamlin, he had been left to his own resources, but
Mr. Bowers's resources were a life-long experience and technical skill;
he too had noted the topographical indications of the poem, and his
knowledge of the sylva of Upper California pointed as unerringly as Mr.
Hamlin's luck to the cryptogamous haunts of the Summit. Such abnormal