would o' died sure, if we hadn't let him go; it was pitiful to see
him. Everybody 'lows there won't nothin' in the woods hurt him
nohow; so we let him come and go, as he likes; and he just stops
with the neighbors wherever he happens in. Folks are all as good
to him as they can be, 'cause everybody knows how it is. You see,
sir, people here don't think nothin' of a wood's colt, nohow, but
we was raised different. As wife says, we've most forgot civilized
ways, but I guess there's some things a man that's been raised
right can't never forget.

"She died when Pete was born, and the last thing she said was,
'He'll come, Daddy, he'll sure come.' Pete says the wind singin'
in that big pine over her grave is her a callin' for him yet. It's
mighty queer how the boy got that notion, but you see that's the
way it is with him.

"And that ain't all, sir." The big man moved his chair nearer the
other, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper; "Folks say she's
come back. There's them that swears they've seen her 'round the
old cabin where they used to meet when he painted her picture, the
big one, you know. Just before I bought the ranch, it was first;
and that's why we can't get no one to stay with the sheep.

"I don't know, Mr. Howitt; I don't know. I've thought a heap about
it, I ain't never seen it myself, and it 'pears to me that if she
COULD come back at all, she'd sure come to her old Daddy. Then
again I figure it that bein' took the way she was, part of her
dead, so to speak, from the time she got that letter, and her mind
so set on his comin' back, that maybe somehow--you see--that maybe
she is sort a waitin' for him there. Many's the time I have prayed