,
Piney?" suggested Steering, relishing Piney's reference to the old
Frenchman.

"Best old man in the world," answered Piney, with the soft, sweet
shyness, like a girl's, that was always in his voice when he let his
affections find expression.

Before this Steering had heard, from old Bernique himself, the short
story that had connected the affections of the tramp-boy and the
wandering prospector. Piney, Old Bernique had said, was the child of a
woman whom he had known in St. Louis in the old days. Old Bernique, who
was only middle-aged Bernique then, had lived as a neighbour to the
woman, whom he had loved very much. But the woman had married another
man, and had gone away to the Southwest. And, later on, Old Bernique had
followed. And in these later days, since the woman's death, it had been
given him to keep watch and ward over her child, Piney. Piney's parents
had not been Italians at all, so Old Bernique told Steering, just plain,
everyday Americans, from up "at that St. Louis," quite poor and always
on the move. The father had been known throughout the country-side as a
"blame' good fiddler" and the mother had been, oh a vair' wonderful
woman, if one could believe Old Bernique. But there was no Italian blood
in Piney. His feeling for Italy had to be explained in another way. It
was the great sweet note of poetry, music and beauty, of that far
country, vibrating across the years and the miles, taken up as a memory
in the Missouri hills by Old Bernique and, through him, reaching a
Missouri boy's heart, all tuned and pitched for it. That was all there
was to Piney's story. It was only a fragment.

Reaching their horses in the glade, Steering and Piney mounted and
started up the river road. "Can't you come with us for the rest of the
week, son?" asked Bruce, as they journeyed.

"Nope. Goin' trampin' by myse'f." It was Piney's habit to disappear for
days, gipsy that he was. Perhaps the habit was growing upon him a little
of late. He had no abiding place; sometimes he referred to one hill
shanty, sometimes to another, as home; but the home-feeling with him was
at its fullest and strongest when he was "trampin'." Ostensibly his
vocation was that of a travelling farm-hand, but it was all ostentation.
Piney would not work. Not while the pony could carry him from hospitable
farm-house to hospitable farm-house. He was a knight of the saddle, the
uncrowned king of the woods, and Bruce, riding along beside him now,
regard