ose, and
six feet of ground--and that's all," he said.

Job wanted to say, "And heaven," but he did not dare. And then a
thought startled him: Was this man, who had gained this world, ready
for any other?

For an hour Andrew Malden rambled on. He talked of the Mexican war;
told of Vera Cruz and the battle of Monterey. "Bravest thing you ever
saw, boy. One of those Greasers rode square up to our line and flung a
taunt in our faces, and rode away in disdain, while all our batteries
opened on him."

He came to the close of the war stories, when he suddenly stopped and
grew silent, puffed at an old pipe, rose and walked back and forth. He
was thinking of that day when he had come back so proudly to claim
Mary Moore, and had found the blow under which he had staggered for
nearly forty years.

"You've heard of Lincoln, my boy--old Abe Lincoln? Well, I knew him
when we were boys," he said, as he sat down again. Then he told story
after story of the long, lean, lank Kentucky boy, who rode a raft down
the Mississippi and helped clear the frontier forests; the boy who was
one day to strike a blow for right that would shake a continent.

Andrew Malden laughed till Job caught the contagion and laughed, too,
as story followed story. Then, after another silence, he went on
again:

"Dead! Abe Lincoln's dead, and Zach Taylor's dead--and so the world
goes. 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' the Bible says. My father
used to read it to us boys, when I was your age. It's true, my boy.
Have as little to do with the world as you can, except to get an
honest living out of it--a living anyway. Don't love anybody. It don't
pay."

The old man faltered. He got up and paced the porch again, then,
coming back, he put his hand on the boy's shoulder, and, looking into
his face, said:

"Job, I want to tell you something; seems as if I must to-night."

And there in the clear moonlight, interrupted only by Shot's
occasional growl, and the distant hoot of an owl or bark of a coyote,
Andrew Malden told his life story to the boy at his side, the boy who
was just passing up to young manhood. He told of Mary Moore; of the
weary tramp behind an ox-team across the prairies and Nevada desert;
of that snow-bound winter near Denver Lake; of the early days of Gold
City. He told of his son who slept beneath the graveyard pines; of his
own lonely life in the mountains; then he came to that night when he
had brought this boy home. He put his arm aroun