bare hills and the Indians. He felt that his mother, also, had
been afraid. He pictured again--and he picture was blurred and
indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father
mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of
their feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly in their
hands.

There had been a day of hushed voices and much weeping and
gloom, and he had been afraid to play. Then they had carried
his father as mysteriously away again, and his mother had hugged
him close and cried bitterly and long. The rest was blank. When
one is only five, the present quickly blurs what is past, and he
wondered that, after all these years, he should feel the grip of
something very like homesickness--and for something more than
half forgotten. But though he did not realize it, in his veins
flowed the adventurous blood of his father, and to it the dim
trails were calling.

In four days he set his face eagerly toward the dun deserts and
the sage-brush gray.

At Chicago a man took the upper berth in Thurston's section, and
settled into the seat with a deep sigh- presumably of
thankfulness. Thurston, with the quick eye of those who write,
observed the whiteness of his ungloved hands, the coppery tan of
cheeks and throat, the clear keenness of his eyes, and the four
dimples in the crown of his soft, gray hat, and recognized him
as a fine specimen of the Western type of farmer, returning home
from the stockman's Mecca. After that he went calmly back to
his magazine and forgot all about him.