"All my life I have longed to see you," the boy said.

The stranger broke off the end of his cigar, and lit it. The boy lifted
the heavy wood from the stranger's knee and drew yet nearer him. In the
dog-like manner of his drawing near there was something superbly
ridiculous, unless one chanced to view it in another light. Presently the
stranger said, whiffing, "Do something for me."

The boy started up.

"No; stay where you are. I don't want you to go anyowhere; I want you to
talk to me. Tell me what you have been doing all your life."

The boy slunk down again. Would that the man had asked him to root up
bushes with his hands for his horse to feed on; or to run to the far end of
the plain for the fossils that lay there, or to gather the flowers that
grew on the hills at the edge of the plain; he would have run and been back
quickly--but now!

"I have never done anything," he said.

"Then tell me of that nothing. I like to know what other folks have been
doing whose word I can believe. It is interesting. What was the first
thing you ever wanted very much?"

The boy waited to remember, then began hesitatingly, but soon the words
flowed. In the smallest past we find an inexhaustible mine when once we
begin to dig at it.