"Well, I'm sure we've lost enough already, when it comes to that," she continued, folding her hands resignedly in her convex lap. "There was that artesian well down at San Pasqual"-- "Well, now, Emeline," her husband broke in eagerly, "that well would have been all right if the tools hadn't stuck. I think yet we'd have got water if we'd gone on." "We'd 'a' got water if it had 'a' been our heavenly Fawther's will," announced Mrs. Dysart, with solemnity, rising slowly from her chair, which gave a little squeak of relief. "I've got to set the sponge," she went on in the same tone, as if it were some sacred religious rite. "I wish you'd talk it over with Mr. Palmerston, Jawn, and tell him the offer you've had from this perfessor--I'm sure I don't know what he's perfessor of. He ain't a perfessor of religion--I know that." She sent her last arrow over her wide shoulder as she passed the two men and creaked into the house. Her husband looked after her gravely. "Now that's the way with Emeline," he said; "she's all faith, and then, again, she has no faith. Now, I'm just the other way." He rubbed his bald head in a vain attempt to formulate the obverse of his wife's character. "Well, anyway," he resumed, accepting his failure cheerfully, "the professor he wants to find a claim, as I was telling you, but he wants one that's handy to the place he's selected for the tunnel. Of course he won't say just where that is till we get the papers made out, but he gave me a kind of a general idea of it, and the land around there's all mine. He'd have to go 'way over east to find a government section that hasn't been filed on, and of course there'd be a big expense for pipe; so he offers to locate the tunnel for half the water if we get ten inches or over, and I'm to make the tunnel, and deed him twenty acres of land." "Suppose you get less than ten inches--what then?" "Then it's all to be mine; but I'm to deed him the land all the same." "How many inches of water have you from your spring now?" "About ten, as near as I can guess." "Well, suppose he locates the tunnel so it will drain your spring; are you to have the expense of the work and the privilege of giving him half the water and twenty acres of land--is that it?" John rubbed the back of his neck and reflected. "The professor laughs at the idea of ten inches of water. He says we'll get at least a hundred, maybe more. You see, if we were to get that much, I'd have a lot of water to sell to the settlers below. It 'u'd be a big thing." "So it would; but there's a big 'if' in there, Dysart. Do you know anything about this man's record?" "I asked about him down in Los Angeles. Some folks believe in him, and some don't. They say he struck a big stream for them over at San Luis. I don't go much on what people say, anyway; I size a man up, and depend on that. I like the way the professor talks. I don't understand all of it, but he seems to have things pretty pat. Don't you think he has?"