among the rising young lawyers of a prosperous new town that was fast
developing into a commercial center.

"I am doing well, splendidly," he wrote Dr. Layton after two years of hard
work, "and one of these days I am coming back to make that promised visit."

But the years came and went, and still the West held him in its powerful
clutch. Success smiled upon his pathway, and into his life entered the
sweet, new joy of a woman's love and devotion, and into his home came the
happy music of children's voices. When his eldest boy was eight years old,
his district elected him to the State senate, and four years later sent him
to Congress,--an honest, uncompromising adherent to principle and duty.

"And now, at last," he wrote Dr. Layton, "I am coming East, and I shall run
down from Washington for that long-promised visit. Why do you write so
seldom, when I have never yet failed to inform you of my pyrotechnic
advancement into the world of politics? It is not fair. And how is the
family cow? Surely Madam Daisy sleeps with her poor mother ere this, or has
been cut up into roasts and steaks."

And to this letter the doctor replied briefly but gladly:--

"So you are coming at last, my boy! Well, you will find us in the same old
house,--a little the worse for wear, perhaps,--and leading the same quiet
life. No, not the same, though it is quiet enough, for I am growing old,
and the town is running after the new young doctors, leaving us old ones in
the rear, to trudge along as best we can. There isn't any 'family cow' now,
Harry. Daisy was sold long ago for beef, poor thing! We never got another,
for I am getting too old to milk, and there never seemed to come along
another boy like the old Harry, who would take all the barn-yard