ace
and wavy black hair, gave him a remarkably bright and wide-awake look.

As soon as dinner was over, we all repaired to the blacksmith-shop,
where Joe at once went to work. It was very evident that he knew what he
was about: every blow seemed to count in the right direction; so that in
about half an hour he had fashioned his piece of iron into the desired
shape, when he plunged it into the tub of water, and then, clapping it
into the vise, went to work on it with a file; every now and then
comparing it with the broken casting which lay on the bench beside him.

"There!" he exclaimed at last. "I believe that will fit." And, indeed,
when he laid them side by side, one would have been puzzled to tell
which was which, had not the old piece been painted red while the other
was not painted at all.

Joe was right: the piece did fit; and in less than an hour from the time
we had finished dinner we were at work again in the hay-field.

The month which followed was a strenuous one, but by the end of it we
had the satisfaction of knowing that we had put up the biggest crop of
hay ever cut on the ranch.

Our new helper, who was a tall, stout fellow for his age, and an
untiring worker, proved to be a capital hand, and though at first he was
somewhat awkward, being unused to farm labor, before we had finished he
could do a better day's work than I could, in spite of the fact that I
had been a ranch boy ever since I had been a boy at all.

We all took a great liking for Joe, and we were very pleased, therefore,
when, the hay being in, it was arranged that he should stay on. For
there was plenty of work to be done that year--extra work, I mean--such
as building fences, putting up an ice-house and so forth, in which Joe,
having a decided mechanical turn, proved a valuable assistant. So, when
the spring came round again it found Joe still with us; and with us he
continued to stay, becoming so much one of the family that many people,
as I said, who did not know his story, supposed that he and I were
brothers in fact, as we soon learned to become brothers in feeling.

Long before this, of course, Joe had told us all about himself and how
he had come to leave his old home and make his way westward.

Of French-Canadian descent, the boy, left an orphan at three years of
age, had been taken in by a neighbor, a kind-hearted blacksmith, and
with him he had lived for the twelve years following, when the
blacksmith, now an old man, had