m too hard
when he is turning a sharp corner. Remember he has a long reach with
his old paleozoic tail. Luck!" with a laugh through her tears; a laugh
with tremulous cheer in it and yet with the ring of a key in the lock
of a gate.

Unsteadily he bent over and taking her hands in his pressed his
lips to them.

"Yes, luck!" he repeated, and half staggering turned toward the defile.

"Luck!" she called after him when he was out of sight. "Luck!" she called
to the silence of the pass.

Three days with the trail and the Eternal Painter mocking him, when the
singing of Spanish verses that go click with the beat of horse-hoofs in
the sand sounded hollow as the refrain of vain memories, and from the
steps of a Pullman he had a final glimpse of Firio's mournful face, with
its dark eyes shining in the light of the station lamp. Firio had in his
hand a paper, a sort of will and testament given him at the last minute,
which made him master in fee simple of the ranch where he had been
servant, with the provision that the Doge of Little Rivers might store
his overflow of books there forever.

PART II

HE FINDS HIMSELF

XXIII

LABELLED AND SHIPPED

Behold Jack clad in the habiliments of conventional civilization taken
from the stock of ready-made suitings in an El Paso store! They were of
the Moscowitz and Guggenheim type, the very latest and nattiest, as
advertised in popular prints. The dealer said that no gentleman could be
well dressed without them. He wanted to complete the transformation with
a cream-colored Fedora or a brown derby.

"I'll wait on the thirty-third degree a little longer," said Jack,
fondling the flat-brimmed cowpuncher model of affectionate predilection.
Swinging on a hook on the sleeper with the sway of the train, its company
was soothing to him all the way across the continent.

The time was March, that season of the northern year when winter growing
stale has a gritty, sticky taste and the relief of spring seems yet far
away. After the desert air the steam heat was stifling and nauseating.
Jack's head was a barrel about to burst its hoops; his skin drying like a
mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt
boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into
his berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up to
asphyxiation at the whim of strange gods.

If you have ever come back to town after six months in the woods, six
m