He drew back astonished, and then suddenly came that laugh that Lanty remembered and now hailed with joy. “I believe you, by Jove!” he gasped. “That first night I wore the disguise in which I have tracked him and mingled with his gang. Yes! I see it all now--and more. I see that to YOU I owe his recapture!” “To me!” echoed the bewildered girl; “how?” “Why, instead of making for his cave he lingered here in the confines of the ranch! He thought you were in love with him, because you freed him and gave him his knife, and stayed to see you!” But Lanty had her apron to her eyes, whose first tears were filling their velvet depths. And her voice was broken as she said,-- “Then he--cared--a--good deal more for me--than some people!” But there is every reason to believe that Lanty was wrong! At least later events that are part of the history of Foster's Rancho and the Foster family pointed distinctly to the contrary. AN ALI BABA OF THE SIERRAS Johnny Starleigh found himself again late for school. It was always happening. It seemed to be inevitable with the process of going to school at all. And it was no fault “o' his.” Something was always occurring,--some eccentricity of Nature or circumstance was invariably starting up in his daily path to the schoolroom. He may not have been “thinkin' of squirrels,” and yet the rarest and most evasive of that species were always crossing his trail; he may not have been “huntin' honey,” and yet a wild bees' nest in the hollow of an oak absolutely obtruded itself before him; he wasn't “bird-catchin',” and yet there was a yellow-hammer always within stone's throw. He had heard how grown men hunters always saw the most wonderful animals when they “hadn't got a gun with 'em,” and it seemed to be his lot to meet them in his restricted possibilities on the way to school. If Nature was thus capricious with his elders, why should folk think it strange if she was as mischievous with a small boy? On this particular morning Johnny had been beguiled by the unmistakable footprints--so like his own!--of a bear's cub. What chances he had of ever coming up with them, or what he would have done if he had, he did not know. He only knew that at the end of an hour and a half he found himself two miles from the schoolhouse, and, from the position of the sun, at least an hour too late for school. He knew that nobody would believe him. The punishment for complete truancy was little worse than for being late. He resolved to accept it, and by way of irrevocability at once burnt his ships behind him--in devouring part of his dinner.