.

We decided to break up our little home, and while I went to Mexico,
Zulime planned to visit Chicago and await my return. I was loth to
dismantle our apartment, and when at the station I said good-by to my
little daughter and her mother, I was almost persuaded that nothing was
worth the pain of parting from that small shining face and those
seeking, clinging hands. She had grown deep into my heart during those
winter months.

I felt very poor and lonely as I went to my bed at the club that first
night after our separation, and when next day Bacheller invited me out
to his new home at Sound Beach, I gratefully accepted, although I was in
the middle of getting a new book through the press--a job which my
publishers had urged upon me against my better judgment. I felt that I
was being hurried.

Bacheller, highly prosperous, was living at this time in a handsome
waterside bungalow, with a big sitting-room in which a generous fire
glowed. It happened that he was entertaining General Henderson of Iowa,
and when in some way it developed that we were all famous singers, a
spirited contest arose as to which of us could beat the others.
Henderson sang Scotch lyrics very well, and Bacheller was full of tunes
from his North Country, whilst I--well if I didn't keep my whiffletree
off the wheel, it was not for lack of effort. I sang "Maggie" and "Lily
Dale" and "Rosalie the Prairie Flower," all of which made a powerful
impression on Henderson; but it was not till I sang "The Rolling Stone,"
that I fully countered. Irving asked me to repeat this song, but I
refused. "You might catch the tune," I explained.

The general's face shone with pleasure but a wistful cadence was in his
voice. "Your tunes carry me back to my boyhood," he said, "I heard my
mother sing some of them."

He was near the end of his life, although none of us realized it that
night, and we all went our ways in the glow of a tender friendship--a
friendship deepened by this reminiscent song. Three days later Bacheller
and I were entering Mexico on our way to my mine.

Although Bacheller declined to go into partnership with me we had a
gorgeous trip, and that was the main object so far as the other fellows
were concerned, and as I wrote an article on the caverns of Cacawamilpa
which paid my expenses I was content.

In returning to the North by way of El Paso and the Rock Island road, I
encountered a sandstorm, whose ferocity dimmed the memory of the one in
whi