halted and stretched himself. He threw his head back and let the
warm sun beat down upon his bronzed face.

There's sunshine in the heart of me,
My blood sings in the breeze;
The mountains are a part of me,
I'm fellow to the trees.
My golden youth I'm squandering,
Sun-libertine am I,
A-wandering, a-wandering,
Until the day I die.

And then he stood for minutes drinking in deep breaths of the pure,
sweet air of the new day. Beside him, a head taller, savagely strong,
stood Billy Byrne, his broad shoulders squared, his great chest
expanding as he inhaled.

"It's great, ain't it?" he said, at last. "I never knew the country was
like this, an' I don't know that I ever would have known it if it hadn't
been for those poet guys you're always spouting.

"I always had an idea they was sissy fellows," he went on; "but a guy
can't be a sissy an' think the thoughts they musta thought to write
stuff that sends the blood chasin' through a feller like he'd had a
drink on an empty stomach.

"I used to think everybody was a sissy who wasn't a tough guy. I was a
tough guy all right, an' I was mighty proud of it. I ain't any more an'
haven't been for a long time; but before I took a tumble to myself I'd
have hated you, Bridge. I'd a-hated your fine talk, an' your poetry, an'
the thing about you that makes you hate to touch a guy for a hand-out.

"I'd a-hated myself if I'd thought that I could ever talk mushy like I
am now. Gee, Bridge, but I was the limit! A girl--a nice girl--called
me a mucker once, an' a coward. I was both; but I had the reputation of
bein' the toughest guy on the West Side, an' I thought I was a man. I
nearly poked her face for her--think of it, Bridge! I nearly did; but
something stopped me--something held my hand from it, an' lately I've
liked to think that maybe what stopped me was something in me that had
always been there--something decent that was really a part of me. I hate
to think that I was such a beast at heart as I acted like all my life
up to that minute. I began to change then. It was mighty slow, an' I'm
still a roughneck; but I'm gettin' on. She helped me most, of course,
an' now you're helpin' me a lot, too--you an' your poetry stuff. If some
dick don't get me I may get to be a human bein' before I die."

Bridge laughed.

"It IS odd," he said, "how our viewpoints change with changed
environment and the passing of the years. Time was, Billy, when I'd have
hated you as