"Ah, that's too bad," said Willard, feigning an indifference he was far from feeling. "Still, I have no real business on hand. I happened to be at a loose end in Denver, and didn't seem to know anybody in the Brown Palace Hotel; so I came out here, to take a peep at the old shanty, so to speak." "You'll hev' located an alteration or two already?" chuckled the other. "Every yard of the way was a surprise." "Guess that's so; but what you've seen is small pertaters with the circus on the other side of the hill." "On the ranch! Things can't have changed so greatly there?" "You come this-a way, an' survey the park." MacGonigal led the visitor through a check office, and along a corridor. Throwing open a door, he ushered him into a well furnished room, with two French windows opening on to a spacious veranda. "This yer is Derry's den," he said. "He likes ter look at the grass growin'; but my crib is at the other side, whar I kin keep tab on the stuff that makes most other things grow as well. Not that it ain't dead easy ter know why Derry likes this end of the outfit--an' nobody livin' 'll understand that better'n yerself, Mr. Willard, when you've looked the proposition over fer ten seconds by the clock." Willard had never found MacGonigal so loquacious in former days; but he was too preoccupied by the tokens of success that met his furtive gaze in every direction to give much heed to any marked change in his guide's manner. Moreover, he had scarcely set foot in the veranda before he yielded to a feeling which, at first, was one of undiluted amazement. The annual rainfall had been normal since he abandoned ranching; but Colorado in June is not exactly the home of lush meadows during the best of years, and he was staring now at a fertile panorama of green pastures, and thriving orchards, while the ranch itself was set in the midst of smooth lawns embosomed in a wealth of shrubs and ornamental trees. Greatest miracle of all, a tiny stream of pellucid water was flowing down the Gulch. "I don't quite grasp this," he muttered thickly, while his eyes roved almost wildly from the dancing rivulet to the fair savannah which it had made possible. "A bit of a wonder, ain't it?" gurgled MacGonigal placidly. "Jest another piece of luck, that's what it air. Derry can't go wrong, I keep tellin' him. I had a notion the hull blamed show was busted when we struck a spring at the end o' the fust dip of two hundred feet; but Derry jest laughed in his quiet way, an' said, 'There oughter be tears round about any place called Grief, an' now we have Dolores weepin'. We've tapped a perennial spring, Mac, an' it's the very thing I wanted ter make the ranch a fair copy of Paradise.' There you hev' it--Derry's luck--a pipe line laid on by Nature--an' him raisin' apples, Mr. Willard, raisin' pippins as big as your fist, on land whar _you_ couldn't raise a bundle of alfalfa!"