were man to man once more. The quaint, subdued humor asserted itself, and
the narrator's speech flowed on in the homely dialect which expressed the
man.

"I stayed out all that winter, workin' towards the coast. One day, along
in March, I fetched a charcoal burner's camp, and the critter took me in
and nursed my frost-bites and didn't ask no questions, nor I of him. We
struck up a trade, my drivin' stock, mostly skin and bone, for a show in
his business. He wa'n't gettin' rich at it, that was as plain as the hip
bones on my mules. I kep' in the woods, cuttin' timber and tendin' kiln,
and he hauled and did the sellin'. Next year he went below to Portland and
brought home smallpox with him. It broke out on him on the road. He was a
terrible sick man. I buried him, and waited for my turn. It didn't come. I
seemed kind o' insured. I've been in lots of trouble since then, but
nothing ever touched me till now. I banked on it too strong, though. I
sure did! My pardner was just such another lone bird like me. If he had
any folks of his own he kep' still about them. So I took his name--whether
it was his name there's no knowing. Guess I've took full as good care of
it as he would. 'Hagar?' folk would say, sort o' lookin' me over. 'You
ain't Jim Hagar.' No, but I was John, and they let it go at that.

"I heard of your mother that summer, from a prospector who came up past my
camp. He'd wintered in Mountain Home. He told me my own story, the way
they had it down there, and what straits your mother was in. I had scraped
up quite a few dollars by then, and was thinking how I'd shove it into a
bank like an old debt coming to Adam Bogardus. I was studying how I was
going to rig it. There wasn't any one who knew me down there, so I felt
safe to ventur' a few inquiries. What I heard was that she'd gone home to
her folks and was as well off as anybody need be. That broke me all up at
first. I must have had a sneakin' notion that maybe some day I could see