ong."

The man turned to go. "You found the tramp pow'ful lazy, didn't ye?"

"I found a heap more in him than in some that call themselves smart,"
said Dr. West, unconsciously setting up an irritable defense of the
absent one. "Hurry up that horse!"

The foreman vanished. The Doctor put on a pair of leather leggings,
large silver spurs, and a broad soft-brimmed hat, but made no other
change in his usual half-professional conventional garb. He then went
to the window and glanced in the direction of the highway. Now that
his son was gone, he felt a faint regret that he had not prolonged the
interview. Certain peculiarities in his manner, certain suggestions of
expression in his face, speech, and gesture, came back to him now with
unsatisfied curiosity. "No matter," he said to himself; "he'll turn up
soon again--as soon as I want him, if not sooner. He thinks he's got a
mighty soft thing here, and he isn't going to let it go. And there's
that same d--d sullen dirty pride of his mother, for all he doesn't
cotton to her. Wonder I didn't recognize it at first. And hoarding up
that five dollars! That's Jane's brat, all over! And, of course," he
added, bitterly, "nothing of ME in him. No; nothing! Well, well,
what's the difference?" He turned towards the door, with a certain
sullen defiance in his face so like the man he believed he did not
resemble, that his foreman, coming upon him suddenly, might have been
startled at the likeness. Fortunately, however, Harrison was too much
engrossed with the antics of the irrepressible Buckeye, which the
ostler had just brought to the door, to notice anything else. The
arrival of the horse changed the Doctor's expression to one of more
practical and significant resistance. With the assistance of two men
at the head of the restive brute, he managed to vault into the saddle.
A few wild plunges only seemed to settle him the firmer in his
seat--each plunge leaving its record in a thin red line on the animal's
flanks, made by the cruel spurs of its rider. Any lingering desire of
following his son's footsteps was quickly dissipated by Buckeye, who
promptly bolted in the opposite direction, and, before Dr. West could
gain active control over him, they were half a mile on their way to La
Mision Perdida.

Dr. West did not regret it. Twenty years ago he had voluntarily
abandoned a legal union of mutual unfaithfulness and misconduct, and
allowed his wife to get the divorce he