uestion concerning our meeting. Alas! My fears were
justified. There was more of pain than pleasure in the visit, for us
all. Although my brother and I did our best to make it joyous, the
conditions of the reunion were sorrowful, for David, who like my father,
had been following the lure of the sunset all his life, was in deep
discouragement.

From his fruitful farm in Iowa he had sought the free soil of Dakota.
From Dakota he had been lured to Montana. In the forests of Montana he
had been robbed by his partner, reduced in a single day to the rank of a
day laborer, and so in the attempt to retrieve his fortunes, had again
moved westward--ever westward, and here now at last in San Jose, at the
end of his means and almost at the end of his courage, he was working at
whatever he could find to do.

Nevertheless, he was still the borderer, still the man of the open.
Something in his face and voice, something in his glance set him apart
from the ordinary workman. He still carried with him something of the
hunter, something which came from the broad spaces of the Middle Border,
and though his bushy hair and beard were streaked with white, and his
eyes sad and dim, I could still discern in him some part of the physical
strength and beauty which had made his young manhood so glorious to
me--and deeper yet, I perceived in him the dreamer, the Celtic minstrel,
the poet.

His limbs, mighty as of old, were heavy, and his towering frame was
beginning to stoop. His brave heart was beating slow. Fortune had been
harshly inimical to him and his outlook on life was bitter. With all his
tremendous physical power he had not been able to regain his former
footing among men.

In talking of his misfortunes, I asked him why he had not returned to
Wisconsin after his loss in Montana, and he replied, as my father had
done. "How could I do that? How could I sneak back with empty pockets?"

Inevitably, almost at once, father spoke of the violin. "Have you got it
yet?" he asked.

"Yes," David replied. "But I seldom play on it now. In fact, I don't
think there are any strings on it."

I could tell from the tone of his voice that he had no will to play, but
he dug the almost forgotten instrument out of a closet, strung it and
tuned it, and that evening after dinner, when my father called out in
familiar imperious fashion, "Come, come! now for a tune," David was
prepared, reluctantly, to comply.

"My hands are so stiff and clumsy now," he s