"All hope abandon, ye who enter here" was carved in ancient letters just under the lintel of the door. Next he was informed that "Fools names, like their faces, are always seen in public places." "Only a sucker would live here" was the parting decision of some disgruntled guest. "Home, Sweet Home" adorned the bottom of the door. One panel had proved an excellent target, and no less than twenty bullet holes had made a sieve of it. "Welcome, Wanderer!" and "Dew Drop Inn" and "Though lost to sight to memory dear" occupied conspicuous places. Then on the right-hand frame he noticed this: [Illustration: Beware] The carving was neatly executed. The leaves represented were indisputably those of the poison oak. Had some one carved this in a jocular effort to warn chance visitors to the place of the danger of the poison weed? Or did the carving represent the emblem of the Poison Oakers? Oliver smiled grimly and opened the door. He passed through the three small rooms of the house and investigated the loft. The structure seemed solid. A new roof would be necessary, and new windows and frames and a new porch; and as Oliver was no mean carpenter, he thought he could make the cabin snug and tight for seventy-five dollars. The front door had closed of itself, he found, when he started back to his campfire. He stopped in the main room, and a smile, slightly bitter, flickered across his lips. As neatly carved as was the symbol of the Poison Oakers outside--if that was what it was--and evidently executed by the same hand, was this, on the inside of the door: JESSAMY, MY SWEETHEART Oliver went on out and squatted over his fire, peeling potatoes. His blue eyes grew studious. In the flickering blaze he saw the picture of a black-eyed, black-haired girl on a white horse crouched on its haunches. "Great Scott!" he muttered. "I'll have to forget that!" * * * * * In the month that followed, Oliver Drew, spurred by feverish enthusiasm, worked miracles on the Old Tabor Ivison Place. He repaired the line fences and rehabilitated the cabin; bought a burro and pack-saddle and packed in lumber and tools and household necessities; fenced off his experimental garden on the level land with rabbit-tight netting; cleaned and boxed the spring; and early in May was following the spading up of his garden plot by planting vegetable seed. With all this behind him, he went at the clearing of the road that connected him with his kind. Today as he laboured with pick and shovel and bar he was cheerful, though his thoughts clung to the subject of his father's death and the odd situation in which it had left him. He had fully expected to inherit properties and money to the extent of a hundred thousand dollars. He was not particularly resentful because this had not come to pass, for he never had been a pampered young man; but the mystery of his father's last message puzzled and chagrined him.