, he did not go away, sought me
out in Canaan next day and has spent a good deal of time with me ever
since. He is a splendid old character. Missouri is chuck full of
character, for the matter of that. Besides old Bernique, I have made
another friend, named Piney. Isn't that a pretty nice name? He is a sort
of gipsy lad who roams the woods in company with old Bernique. I have
seen him nearly every day since I have been here, because old Bernique
and I ride about the Tigmores, and Piney is sure to fall in with us
somewhere along the road. I have also met some others.

You can have no conception, Carry, of the strength of pull that Missouri
can exert over a fellow. You stand up on a hill and look at her, and
something, your dead forefathers maybe, comes up to you in waves of
influence. "Come back to your own!" says the Something, "I am waiting
for you! By me conquer!" The longer I stay in Missouri, the longer I
mean to stay. I have accepted the challenge of this great unconquered,
waiting land. It is my own country.

Sorry to have kept you so long over all this, but I thought that you
ought to know. Shall write you the out-look after the Joplin trip. I
have a notion that things will be adjusted toward the future after that.

Give my love to the fellows.
Yours, B. S.

P. S. Please express me one of those fold-up, carry-around-with-you
bath-tubs.

When Carington, in the office down on Nassau Street, had read that, all
of it, he turned over the last sheet and looked blankly at its
blankness, quoted from the first paragraph, "Had I not got a feeling of
encouragement from other experiences"; reread the entire letter, and was
still afflicted with a sense of something lacking.

"Now where the dickens did he get the encouragement?" cried Carington
fretfully. "Psha! he has not put that in at all!"

As a matter of entity and quiddity, it is well-nigh impossible to put
into a letter the little quivering lift of spirit that may come to a man
just because a girl's hair is lustrous, her eyes winey, her voice
delicious, her smile one of gay fellowship.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Carington could not.

_Chapter Five_

BOOM TIME IN THE TOWN THAT JACK BUILT

"Here we are! This is the town that jack built, this is the town the
poet wrote about!" Madeira was leaning forward from the rear seat of a
high road-cart to talk to Steering, who sat on the front seat beside the
driver. Madeira had the back s