There was a hollowing out of the bank under the eaves of a large pine root, and here the spring had been bubbling unnoticed for centuries. A delicate fringing of fern hung from the moist earth motionless over its reflection in the small, quivering mirror. Near by there was an outcropping of rock, and broken bits had been used to pave the edge where the crystal lip of water trembled, and to make a little channel for it to slip down. A rusty tin cup hung on a dead bough, and the girl rinsed it, and dipping it in the clear depths, handed it to him. “Try it,” she said. “It tastes quite different here among the pine roots with the smell of the woods all round.” He drank it, marveling at the sharp, acrid tang. She hung the cup back on the twig, and taking off her hat, sat down on a bent root that the pine above it seemed to have thrown out in a kindly desire to be hospitable. The Colonel subsided on to a flat shoulder of rock, rusted with lichen. “Hasn’t it hidden itself in a pretty spot?” she said. “And didn’t it hide itself well? Coming on it from the other side you never would have suspected a spring was here among the roots of the trees.” “And you discovered it?” She nodded, looking down into the tiny basin. [Illustration: “HERE IT IS! DO YOU WONDER NO ONE EVER FOUND IT?”] “I traced it up from the little stream that runs away from it. I found it in March, one day when I was prowling.” “Prowling! What’s prowling?” “Prowling?” she smiled, but pensively, her eyes on the water. “It’s just wandering about, generally alone, and not going to any particular place. I’ve prowled all over here. I can lead you straight to the two old shafts and show you the dumps and the remains of the old windlass. They’re almost entirely hidden by wild grapes and things. People who don’t know could easily fall in the shafts; one of them’s quite deep.” It was now her companion’s turn to look pensive. He had sunk the two shafts, and in them, as in the property, how many thousands of dollars he did not like to think. “Those shafts were made,” he said, “fifteen years ago when we all thought you had only to turn over a few shovelfuls of earth and find your fortune.” He struck the rock with his hand and said laughingly: “What an old fraud you’ve been!” She looked at him without returning his smile. “Colonel Parrish,” she said anxiously, “did you sink those two shafts?” He nodded, once more surprised at her indirect reference to his ownership of the land. She made no reply, but, plucking a fern growing out of the earth near her, began slowly to shred its leaves from its stalk and sprinkle them on the surface of the water. “And,” she said suddenly, “you intend now, quite soon, to build a hotel back here, under the pines, at the top of the hill, don’t you?”