Crossing the canyon at the Clear Creek Power Company’s intake, they took the company trail that follows the pipe-line along the southern wall.  From the headwork to the reservoir two thousand feet above the power-house at the mouth of Clear Creek Canyon, this trail is cut in the steep side of the Galena range—­overhanging the narrow valley below—­nine beautiful miles of it.  At Oak Knoll,—­where a Government trail for the Forest Ranger zigzags down from the pipe-line to the wagon road below,—­they halted.

Conrad Lagrange explained that there were three ways back to the world they had left, nearly a month before—­the pipe-line trail to the reservoir and so down to the power-house and the Fairlands road; the Government trail from the pipe-line, over the Galenas to the valley on the other side; or, the Oak Knoll trail down to Clear Creek and out through the canyon gates—­the way they had come.

“But,” objected Aaron King, lazily,—­from where he lay under a live-oak on the mountainside, a few feet above the trail,—­“either route presupposes our wish to return to Fairlands.”

The novelist laughed.  “Listen to him, Czar,”—­he said to the dog lying at his feet,—­“listen to that painter-man.  He doesn’t want to go back to Fairlands any more than we do, does he?”

Rising, Czar looked at his master a moment, with slow waving tail, then turned inquiringly toward the artist.

“Well,” said the young man, “what about it, old boy?  Which trail shall we take?  Or shall we take any of them?”

With a prodigious yawn,—­as though to indicate that he wearied of their foolish indecision,—­Czar turned, with a low “woof,” toward the fourth member of the company, who was browsing along the edge of the trail.  Whenever Czar was in doubt as to the wants of his human companions he always barked at the burro.

“He says, ’ask Croesus’,” commented the artist.

“Good!” cried the older man, with another laugh.  “Let’s put it up to the financier and let him choose.”

“Wait,”—­said the artist, as the other turned toward the burro,—­“don’t be hasty—­the occasion calls for solemn meditation and lofty discourse.”

“Your pardon,”—­returned the novelist,—­“’tis so.  I will orate.”  Carefully selecting a pebble in readiness to emphasize his remarks, he addressed the shaggy arbiter of their fate.  “Sir Croesus, thy pack is lighter by many meals than when first thou didst set out from that land where we did rescue thee from the hands of thy tormenting trader; but thy responsibilities are weightier, many fold.  Upon the wisdom of thy choice, now, great issue rests.  Thou hast thy chance, O illustrious ass, to recompense the world, this day, for the many evils wrought by thy odious ancestor and by all his long-eared kin.  Choose, now, the way thy benefactors’ feet shall go; and see to it, Croesus, that thou dost choose wisely; or, by thy ears, we’ll flay thy woolly hide and hang it on the mountainside—­a warning to thy kind.”