s; and he did. When he
got dressed in a legal manner he looked like he couldn't be anything else
but a cowhand. About forty and reliable, he looked. So I sent him to a
summer camp over on the Madeline plains, where I had a bunch of cattle on
government range. Bert Glasgow lived in a shack with his wife and family
there and had general charge, and Homer was to begin his new life by
helping Bert.

His new life threatened to be short. He showed up here late the third
night after he went over, looking sad and desperate and hunted. He did
look that way more or less at all times, having one of these long, sad
moustaches and a kind of a bit-into face. This night he looked worse than
usual. I thought the hellhounds of the law from Idaho might of took up
his winding trail; but no. It was the rosy-cheeked tots of Mr. and Mrs.
Bert Glasgow that had sent him out into the night.

"Say," he says, "I wouldn't have you think I was a quitter, but if you
want to suicide me just send me back to that horrible place. Children!"
he says. "That's all; just children! Dozens of 'em! Running all over the
place, into everything, under everything, climbing up on you, sticking
their fingers into your eyes--making life unbearable for man and beast.
You never once let on to me," he says reproachfully, "that this Bert had
children."

"No," I says; "and I never let on to you that he's got a mole on his chin
either. What of that?"

Then the poor lollop tries to tell me what of it. I saw he really had
been under a nervous strain, all right. Suffering had put its hot iron
on him. First, he just naturally loathed children anyway. Hadn't he run
away from a good home in Iowa when he was sixteen, account of being the
oldest of seven? He said some things in general about children that would
of got him no applause at a mothers' meeting. He was simply afraid to
look a child in the eye; and, from what he'd like to do to 'em all, it
seemed like his real middle name was Molech. Wasn't that the party with
hostile views about children? Anyway, you could see that Homer's idea of
a real swell festivity would be to hide out by an orphan asylum some
night until the little ones had said their prayers and was tucked all
peaceful into their trundle beds and then set fire to the edifice in
eight places after disconnecting the fire alarm. That was Homer, and he
was honest; he just couldn't help it.

And Bert's tikes had drove him mad with their playful antics. He said
h