e small face before him. "Well,
I'm----" and he stopped to chuckle. Then he turned back to Caleb.

"I suppose, Cal, you know what this early morning call presages?" he
suggested.

Caleb recalled himself with an effort from a contemplation of the
sudden, prideful something which had warmed him while Steve was shaking
hands. He smiled, mechanically.

"I suppose it's the usual raid upon the commissary," he answered.

Allison mounted heavily to the verandah.

"Right!" he exclaimed. "Right! You'll notice that Barbara has already
gone on ahead. She's the skirmish line--scouts--videttes--whatever you
please to call 'em. There's no-one up yet--none of the family--over to
our place. We are hungry, Cal. I hope this is waffle morning?"

Caleb smiled at him, less impersonality in the mirth. It was a regular
custom, this truancy of Barbara Allison and her father--one of the
little human foibles which Caleb often told himself accounted, in part
at least, for his real liking of the man.

"Waffles it is," he said, and he turned toward the boy.

"Would you mind finding Miss Sarah, Steve?" he asked. "Will you tell
her, please, that we are to be subjected to another neighborly
imposition?"

After the boy had disappeared Caleb followed the larger man to a chair.
And this time it was Caleb who met Allison's silence with a
challenging, "Well?"

"Where did you get him, Cal?" Allison demanded. "Where _did_ you get
him? Those shoes, and those trousers--pants, I guess is the word, eh?
And say, how that little beggar did squeeze my hand! Look here!"

He held one soft hand up for inspection. There were faint red welts
still visible across the finger joints.

"Friend of yours, did you say?"

Without stopping to think about it, Caleb was not so keen to enlarge
upon the boy's obvious "points" as he had been with Sarah. He omitted
to mention his thoughts of the night before, and he omitted any
reference to Old Tom, except for the most hazy explanation that the boy
had no immediate kin. But with an increasing eagerness he dilated upon
the small foot traveler's first view of the "city," his breathless
reception of Allison's own switch engine, and his avowed intention to
"look around a trifle," before he located something to do.

"I thought I'd take him down this morning and get McLean to give him a
ride in the cab of one of those sheet-iron steam relics of yours," he
finished.

If Caleb had expected his unadorned reci