and reverie had taken its place. The fire was dying. He saw
the red cliffs grow gray along the edges, age creeping over the rocks;
he saw a mountain fall into a whitening valley, and he looked up. It was
daylight. He went to the door and looked out, and far across the river
the brilliant morning sun was rising from a bath of steam.

"You here yet, Jimmie?" The bed loudly creaked, and the giant, looking
about, found old Gid sitting on the edge of his couch, rubbing his eyes.
"Don't go, for we'll have breakfast now in a minute. I am always glad to
look up and find a picture of manliness and strength. It takes me back
to my own early days, when I didn't know the meaning of weakness. But I
know now--I can feel it all over me. I do think I can dream more foolish
things during three to half a dozen winks of sleep than any man that
ever lived. Now, what could have put it into my mind to dream that I
was born with one leg and was trying at a county fair to swap it off for
two? Well, I hear the old woman setting the table out there. Wait till I
jump into my clothes and I'll pour a gourd of water for you to wash your
face and hands. Had a wash-basin round here somewhere, but don't know
what became of it. Had intended to get another, but have been so busy.
But I'll tell you there's nothing like a good wash under a pouring
gourd. How's your appetite this morning?"

"I don't know."

"Well, you may find it when you sniff old Liza's corn cakes. Now what
the deuce became of that other suspender? We used to call them galluses
in my day. And now where is that infernal gallus? Beats anything I ever
saw in my life. Ah, there it is, over by the window. But how it could
have jumped off I don't know. Now let me shove into my old shoes and
I'll be with you."

Out in the yard, in a fabulous net of gilded mist they stood, to bathe
under the spouting gourd, the mingling of a new day's poetry and the
shiftlessness of an old man. "Stream of silver in the gold of a
resurrected sun," he said, bareheaded and blinking. "Who'd want a
wash-pan? I gad, Jimmie, folks are forgetting how to live. They are
putting too much weight on what they can buy for money, unmindful of the
fact that the best things of this life are free. Look at that gourd,
old, with a sewed-up crack in it, and yet to my mind it serves its
purpose better than a china basin. Well, let's go in now and eat a bite.
I'm always hungry of a morning. An old fellow is nearer a boy when he
fir