"You've been sizing up the region all day in camp, and laying your plans, if the chance ever came to try them out; isn't that so, Aleck?" "You never said truer words in your life, Thad," answered the other. "I found a pretty high rock on which I could perch; and that gave me a chance to look over in this region with those fine glasses of yours. And I tell you now, it gave me a great thrill when I recognized something dad had marked on that little chart. It seemed just as if I could hear his voice calling me from the grave, and telling me I was doing the right thing--to go ahead, no matter who tried to stop me." "What sort of a land-mark was it you saw?" asked the other scout. "Why, you see, he made a rough sketch of a rock that looks a whole lot like a human head," Aleck went on to say, earnestly. "Why, hello! I remember noticing that very same rock, the time I went up to take a look, and see if I could get a glimpse of our hunter squad. While about it, I turned the glasses around, to see if there were any sheep on the sides of the mountains to the south. And it was right then I saw that outline of a face, cut in the rock, just like somebody had used a giant chisel and made it--nose, mouth, chin, forehead, all complete. It startled me a little at first, Aleck." "I should guess it would, Thad; but think what it meant to _me_, when I had seen it on dad's little chart; and knew that the entrance to his hidden mine lay almost in the shadow of that face! I think he looked on it as the rock guardian to his silver lode." "Is that a fact?" ejaculated Thad, partaking in a measure of the excitement that shook the frame of his companion; "Well, that's more than you've seen fit to tell me before, Aleck; and it's some interesting, I own up." "I meant to tell you everything, Thad, believe me," declared the other, quickly, and with some emotion. "After the fine way you and your chums rescued me from that shelf up on the face of the cliff, and said you'd stand by me, no matter what happened, why, I made up my mind that I would keep nothing back from you. By to-morrow I expected to take the map out from the lining of my coat, where it was sewed in by my mother's own dear hands, so that nobody would ever think things had been disturbed at all. And now, I'm surely hoping that we'll both set eyes on dad's mine before another dawn breaks." "For your sake, Aleck, I hope that will come true. You deserve all the luck in the world, and that's what every one of our fellows say. But only for this moonlight I'm afraid we'd have had a hard job of it, coming all this distance; because the way is mighty rough, and both of us have stumbled lots of times as it is. We might have used the lantern, of course, but that would have put it out of business later, when we wanted it bad; and besides, it's flickering might have told our enemies where we were."