“I’m damned if I know what to make of you,” the man muttered, “unless you’re a hoptical delusion!”

“Underneath where I was standing—­just here,”—­and Hamar indicated the spot—­“is water.  Any amount of it, you have only to sink a shaft fifteen feet and you would come to it.”

“Water!” the man laughed, “yes, there is any amount of it—­on your brain, that’s the only water near here.”

“Then you don’t believe me?” Hamar demanded.

“Not likely!” the man responded, “I only believe what I see!  And when I see a face like yours holding out a potful of dollars, I know as how you’ve stolen them.  Git!”—­and Hamar flew.

But Hamar was not so easily nonplussed; not at least when he saw a chance of making money.  Entering the garden, and keeping well out of sight of the gardener, he arrived at the front door by a side path, and with much formality requested to see the owner of the establishment.  The latter happening to be crossing the hall at the time, heard Hamar and asked what he wanted.

Hamar at once informed him he was a dowser, and that, chancing to pass by the garden on his way to his hotel, he had divined the presence of water.

“I only wish there were,” the gentleman exclaimed, “but I fear you are mistaken.  I have attempted several times to sink a well but never with the slightest degree of success.  I have had all the ground carefully prospected by Figgins of Sacramento Street—­he has a very big reputation—­and he assures me there isn’t a drop of water anywhere near here within two hundred feet of the surface.”

“I know better,” Hamar said.  “Will you get your gardener—­who by the way was very rude to me just now when I spoke to him—­to dig where I tell him.  I have absolute confidence in my power of divination.”

The owner of the property, whom I will call Mr. B. assented, and several gardeners, including the one who had so insulted Hamar, were soon digging vigorously.  At the depth of fifteen feet, water was found, and, indeed, so fast did it begin to come in that within a few minutes it had risen a foot.  The onlookers were jubilant.

“I shall send an account of it to the local papers,” Mr. B. remarked.  “Your fame will be spread everywhere.  You have increased the value of my property a thousandfold, I cannot tell you how grateful I am”—­and he, then and there, invited Hamar to luncheon.

After luncheon Mr. B. made him a present of a cheque—­rather in excess of the sum which Hamar had all along intended to have, and could not have refrained from demanding much longer.

In the afternoon all the San Francisco specials were full of the incident, and Hamar, seeing his name placarded for the first time, was so overcome that he spent the rest of the evening in the hotel deliberating how he could best turn his sudden notoriety to account.

At ten o’clock Kelson came in, looking somewhat fatigued, but, nevertheless, pleased.  He, too, had had adventures, and he detailed them with so much elaboration that the other two had frequently to tell him to “dry up.”