not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like
an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from
grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again,
weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the
Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped
him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he
called "The Road."

"I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of
the open hand and heart," he said, on the night he donned my good
black suit.

And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper
and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman,
boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have
known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have
effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet,
prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the
Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that
night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to
love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also
plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to
farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and
once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the
attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of
Anak's sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let
the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often
I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet
he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was
Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he