should continue. If it were necessary to invent
a story to fit the case, he would be as other men, or even better in
the eyes of the child, until there came a time when he must learn the
truth.

Perhaps the time would never come. If he could by any manner of means
keep up the delusion until the Wise Men came out of the East and built
the Magic City, he would be a failure no longer. He would be an
instantaneous success.

Also, though he fully pardoned Celia for her desertion of himself, he
had never quite come to understand or fully forgive her desertion of
the boy, her staying away as she had done month after month, year
after year, missing all the beauty of his babyhood.

He therefore found it impossible to tell the boy that his mother had
heartlessly deserted him, as impossible as to tell him that his father
was a failure.

Yet the child, like every other, insisted upon knowing something of
his origin. To satisfy him, Seth evolved a story, adding to it from
time to time. He told it sitting in the firelight, the boy in his
arms.

It was the story of the Flying Peccary.

"Tell me how I came in the cyclone," Charlie would insist, nestling
into the comfortable curve of his arm.

"The cyclone brought you paht of the way," corrected Seth, jealous of
his theory that cyclones never touched the place of his dugout, the
forks of the two rivers, "and the flyin' peccary brought you the rest.
You've heard me tell about these little Mexican hawgs, the wildest,
woolliest, measliest little hawgs that evah breathed the breath of
life and how they ate up the cyclone?"

"Yes," nodded Charlie.

"Well, this was the first time, I reckon, that a cyclone evah met its
match, becawse a cyclone was nevah known befo' to stop at anything
until it had cleaned up the earth and just stopped then on account of
its bein' out of breath and tiahd. But it met its match that time.

"You see, Texas is full of those measly little peccaries. You can
hahdly live, they say, down theah for them. They eat up the rail
fences, the wagon beds, the bahns and the sheep and the cows. They
don't stop at women and children, I heah, if they get a good chance at
them. And grit! They've got plenty of that, I tell you, and to spah,
those little bad measly Mexican hawgs.

"Well, one day a herd of peccaries wah a gruntin' and squealin' around
the prairie, huntin' for something to eat as usual, when a cyclone
come lumberin' along.

"It come bringin' everything