The time came, at last, when the two men must return to Fairlands. With Mr. and Mrs. Oakley they were spending the evening at Sibyl's home when Conrad Lagrange announced that they would leave the mountains, two days later.
"Then,"--said the girl, impulsively,--"Mr. King and I are going for one last good-by climb to-morrow. Aren't we?" she concluded--turning to the artist.
Aaron King laughed as he answered, "We certainly seem to be headed that way. Where are we going?"
"We will start early and come back late"--she returned--"which really is all that any one ought to know about a climb that is just for the climb. And listen--no rod, no gun, no sketch-book. I'll fix a lunch."
"Watch out for my convict," warned the Ranger. "He must be getting mighty hungry, by now."
Early in the morning, they set out. Crossing the canyon, they climbed the Oak Knoll trail--down which the artist and Conrad Lagrange had been led by the uncanny wisdom of Croesus, a few weeks before--to the pipe-line. Where the path from below leads into the pipe-line trail, under the live-oaks, on a shelf cut in the comparatively easy slope of the mountain's shoulder, they paused for a look over the narrow valley that lay a thousand feet below. Across the wide, gray, boulder-strewn wash of the mountain torrent's way, with the gleaming thread of tumbling Clear Creek in its center, they could see the white dots that marked the camp back of the old orchard; and, farther up the stream, could distinguish the little opening with the cedar thicket and the giant sycamores that marked the spot where Sibyl was born.
Aaron King, looking at the girl, recalled that day when he and Conrad Lagrange, in a spirit of venturesome fun, had left the choice of trails to the burro. "Good, old Croesus!" he said smiling.
She knew the story of how they had been guided to their camping place, and laughed in return, as she answered, "He's a dear old burro, is Croesus, and worthy of a better name."
"Plutus would be better," suggested the artist.
"Because a Greek God is better than a Lydian King?" she asked curiously.