"Nicky, why do the trees in that hollow between the hills look so green?"

"There'll be water over there, miss; that's the Chilano's spring. I'm
thinkin' the old cow might 'a' strayed over that way somewheres; they
mostly goes for the water, wherever it is."

"Is it running water, Nicky,--not water in a tank?"

"Why, no, miss; it cooms right out o' the rock as pretty as iver you saw!
I often goes there myself for a drink, cos it tastes sort o' different,
coomin' out o' the ground like. We wos used to that kind o' water at 'ome."

"Let us go, Nicky," said the girl. "I should like to taste that water, too.
Do we cross the hill first, or is there a shorter way?"

"Over the 'ill's the shortest, miss. It's a bit of a ways, but you've been
longer ways nor they for less at th' end on't."

They "tacked" down the steepest part of the hill, and waded through a
shady hollow, where ferns grew rank and tall,--crisp, faded ferns, with an
aromatic odor which escaped by the friction of their garments, like the
perfume of warmed amber. They reached at length the green trees, a clump
of young cottonwoods at the entrance to a narrow canon, and followed the
dry bed of a stream for some distance, until water began to show among the
stones. The principal outlet of the spring was on a small plantation at the
head of the canon, rented of the "company" by a Chilian, or "the Chilano,"
as he was called; he was not at all a pastoral-looking personage, but, with
the aid of his good water, he earned a moderately respectable living by
supplying the neighboring cabins and the miners' boarding-house with green
vegetables. After a temporary disappearance, as if to purge its memory of