"Th' boofalo have shkipped." "Gone?" "Thot's roight." "Too bad!" Frank felt that he must satisfy himself with his own eyes, and so he hastened to a spot that commanded a view of the place where the creatures had been feeding. Sure enough, they were gone. "That's hard luck!" he muttered. "Here we have been hanging a whole week in the park just to enable me to get a snap at some of the creatures, and we lost our only opportunity. Well, I suppose we should be satisfied to get off with our lives." He knew this was true, and so there was reason to be thankful, instead of grumbling. He returned to where Barney was talking to Fay. The child was anxiously watching Frank's movements. "You ain't doin' away and leave me, is you?" she asked. "No, dear." "I was 'fraid so, and I's awsul hundry." "An' wouldn't ye go wid me av Oi'd take ye where ye'd get plinty to ate?" asked the Irish lad. "Him tome, too?" She held out her hands to Frank. "An' wouldn't ye go av he didn't come?" "I dess not," she said. "I like you pitty well; but I kinder like him better. Him goin' to find my mamma. I dess him dit me somefin to eat." Frank caught her up in his arms. "Yes, dear," he laughed, his heart swelling with a feeling that convinced him he would lay down his life in defense of her, if needs be. "I will find you something to eat as soon as possible, and I will take you to your mother." "Dat's all wight. I ain't doin' to cwy. You don't like little dirls we'en they cwy, does you?" "In your case, I do not think crying would change my feelings. Little girls have to cry sometimes." "I dess dat's wight," said Fay, very soberly. Frank surrendered his rifle to Barney, who insisted on taking the camera also, and then, with the child in his arms, followed the Irish lad on the return tramp to camp. It proved to be a long, tiresome trudge, and the sun was setting when the boys came in sight of a white tent that was pitched near a spring of cool water and a growth of pines down in a pretty valley. Once or twice Fay had murmured that she was "so hundry," but when the camp was sighted, she was asleep in Frank's arms, her head of tangled golden curls lying on his shoulder. A fire was blazing in front of the tent, sending a thin column of smoke straight up into the still air. Near the fire, with a pipe in his mouth, was sitting a grizzled old man, whose appearance indicated that he was a veteran of the mountains and plains. This was Roxy Jules, generally known as "Old Rocks." He was one of the professional guides who make a business of taking parties of tourists through the park and showing them its wonders. Between two trees a hammock was strung, and another man, a little fellow with fiery-red hair and whiskers, was reclining. Gold-bowed spectacles were perched on his nose, and he was studying a book. All at once Old Rocks gave a queer kind of a grunt. As it did not arouse the man in the hammock, he grunted again. That not proving effectual, he growled: