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Alas! not to Flutterwheel Spring. Where the spray had whirled in a fantastic spiral the day before, the moss was still wet, and the ferns waved in happy unconsciousness of their loss; but the stream that had flung itself from one narrow shelf of rock to another, in mad haste to join the rush and roar of Sawpit Canon, had utterly disappeared.

Lysander turned to his companion, his face ashen-gray under the week-old stubble of his beard. Neither of them spoke. The calamity lay too near the source of things for bluster, even if Lysander had been capable of bluster. In swift dual vision they saw the same cruel picture: the shriveling orange-trees, the blighted harvest of figs dropping withered from the trees, the flume dry and useless, the horse-trough empty and warping in the sun,–all the barren hopelessness of a mountain claim without water, familiar to both. And through it all Melissa felt rather than imagined the bitterness of her mother’s wrath. Perhaps it was this latter rather than the real catastrophe that whitened the poor young face, turned toward Lysander in helpless dismay.

“Danged if I don’t hate the job o’ tellin’ yer maw,” said the man at last, raking the dry boulders with his hoe aimlessly,–“danged if I don’t. I can’t figger out who’s done it, but one thing’s certain,–it beats the devil.”

Lysander made the last statement soberly, as if this vindication of his Satanic majesty were a simple act of justice. Seeming to consider the phenomenon explained by a free confession of his own ignorance, he ceased his investigation, and sat down on the edge of the ditch hopelessly.

“Don’t le’ ‘s tell mother right away, Sandy. Paw’s fell asleep, an’ he’ll think you turned the water off. Mebbe if we wait it’ll begin to run again.” The hopefulness of youth crept into Melissa’s quivering voice.

Lysander shook his head dismally.

“I’m willin’ enough to hold off, M’lissy, but I hain’t got much hope. There ain’t any Moses around here developin’ water, that I know of. The meracle business seems to have got into the wrong hands this time; danged if it hain’t. It gets away with me how Forrester can dry up a spring at long range that-a-way; there ain’t a track in the mud around here bigger ‘n a linnet’s,–not a track. It’s pure deviltry, you can bet on that.” Lysander fell back on the devil with restful inconsistency, and fanned himself with his straw hat, curled by much similar usage into fantastic shapelessness.

“I don’t believe he done it,” said Melissa, obstinately charitable. “I don’t believe anybody done it. I believe it just happened. I don’t think folks like them care about folks like us at all, or want to pester us. I believe they just play on things and sing,”–the color mounted to her face, until the freckles were drowned in the red flood,–“an’ laugh, an’ talk, an’ act pullite, an’ that’s all. I don’t believe Colonel Forrester hates mother like she thinks he does at all. I think he just don’t care!”

It was the longest speech Melissa had ever made. Her listener seemed a trifle impressed by it. He rubbed his hair the wrong way, and distorted his face into a purely muscular grin, as he reflected.

“I’ve a mind to go and see Poindexter,” Lysander announced presently. “Poindexter’s a smart man, and I b’lieve he’s a square man. ‘T enny rate, it can’t do any good to keep it a secret. Folks’ll find it out sooner or later. You stay here a minute, M’lissy, and I’ll go on up the canon.”

The young girl seated herself, with her back against a ledge of rocks, and her bare feet straight out before her. She was used to waiting for Lysander. Their companionship antedated everything else in Melissa’s memory, and she early became aware that Lysander’s “minutes” were fractions of time with great possibilities in the way of physical comfort hidden in the depths of their hazy indefiniteness.