d that any
ranchman or cowboy might have worn.

"Some cow-puncher," said Manning, "that they caught out alone. Good
boy! He put up a dandy scrap before they got him. So that's why we
didn't hear from Don Sebastiano any more!"

And then, from beneath the weather-beaten rags of the dead man, there
wriggled out a horned frog with a faded red ribbon around its neck,
and sat upon the shoulder of its long quiet master. Mutely it told the
story of the untried youth and the swift "paint" pony--how they had
outstripped all their comrades that day in the pursuit of the Mexican
raiders, and how the boy had gone down upholding the honour of the
company.

The ranger troop herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from
their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph,
and a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body
of a fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he would
have understood.

XII

THE DOOR OF UNREST

I sat an hour by sun, in the editor's room of the Montopolis _Weekly
Bugle_. I was the editor.

The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the
cornstalks in Micajah Widdup's garden-patch, and cast an amber glory
upon my paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary
revolving chair, and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies.
The room, with its one window, was already a prey to the twilight.
One by one, with my trenchant sentences, I lopped off the heads of
the political hydra, while I listened, full of kindly peace, to the
home-coming cow-bells and wondered what Mrs. Flanagan was going to
have for supper.

Then in from the dusky, quiet street there drifted and perched himself
upon a corner of my desk old Father Time's younger brother. His
face was beardless and as gnarled as an English walnut. I never saw
clothes such as he wore. They would have reduced Joseph's coat to a
monochrome. But the colours were not the dyer's. Stains and patches
and the work of sun and rust were responsible for the diversity. On
his coarse shoes was the dust, conceivably, of a thousand leagues.
I can describe him no further, except to say that he was little and
weird and old--old I began to estimate in centuries when I saw him.
Yes, and I remember that there was an odour, a faint odour like aloes,
or possibly like myrrh or leather; and I thought of museums.

And then I reached for a pad and pencil, for business is business, and
visi