dwell among the almost forgotten years when he, too, was of the world
and delighted in it.

We soon fell into the habit of sociability. Every evening he would
come down to our camp, usually bringing his violin, and sit with us for
hours at our camp fire. His cats--he had near a dozen of them--came
trailing after him, and his two dogs trotted by his side. Two or three
of the cats sprang into his lap as soon as he sat down, and the rest
snarled at the dogs for appropriating the choice positions nearest him,
and then disposed themselves in an outer row. The stable inclosure was
only a few rods distant, and the three burros it contained, as soon as
they heard his voice, ranged themselves in a solemn row at the nearest
point, looking as wise and mysterious as so many sphinxes.

Sometimes he played for us, with unexpected skill and feeling, on his
violin. As the days went by and our acquaintance grew more intimate,
he gradually fell back into memories of the past and turned over for
us, now and then, the pages of his life's history. But all these bits,
heard at many different times, and some things which were told me
afterwards by men who had known him in other years and places, I have
gathered into one continuous narrative. For in my memory they are all
fused together, as if he had told us the whole of his story in one
evening--one special evening, of which remembrance is most vivid.

The moon was at its half, and showered down just enough of its silver
light to bring out sharply the darkling woods on the hill beyond the
little stream and to make his cabin under the trees, off in the
opposite direction, take on strange shapes, while it cut out, sharp and
distinct against the background of light, the silhouettes of the solemn
and unmoving burros, standing in a row behind the fence. Our camp fire