d sigh and smile, for the journey of those four feet
is ended, the story is done.

CHAPTER XXX

BEING SOMEWHAT IN THE NATURE OF AN EPILOGUE

And now that the performance is finished and the curtain has been rung
down, we desire to thank you, one and all, for your kind attention,
and to express the hope that in this highly moral show you may have
found some pleasure as well as profit. But though the play is ended,
and you are already reaching for your hats and coats, the lights are
still dim; and as you see a great white square of light appear against
the curtain, you know that the entertainment is to conclude with a
brief exhibition of the wonders of that great modern invention, the
cinematograph of Time.

The first flickering shadows show you the interior of Watts McHurdie's
shop, and as your eyes take in the dancing shapes, you discern the
parliament in session. Colonel Martin F. Culpepper is sitting there
with Watts McHurdie, reading and re-reading for the fourth and fifth
time, in the peculiar pride that authorship has in listening to the
reverberation of its own eloquence, the brand-new copy of the second
edition of "The Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works of Watts
McHurdie, with Notes and a Biographical Appreciation by Martin F.
Culpepper, 'C' Company, Second Regiment K.V." The colonel, with his
thumb in the book, pokes the fire in the stove, and sits down again to
drink his joy unalloyed. Watts is working on a saddle, but his arms
and his hands are not what they were in the old days when his saddlery
won first prize year after year at the Kansas City Fair. So he puffs
and fusses and sighs his way through his morning's work. Sometimes the
colonel reads aloud a line from a verse, or a phrase from the
Biography--more frequently from the Biography--and exclaims,
"Genius, Watts, genius, genius!" But Watts McHurdie makes no reply. As
his old eyes--quicker than his old fingers--see the sad work they
are making, his heart sinks within him.

"Listen, Watts," cries the colonel. "How do you like this, you old
skeezicks?" and the colonel reads a stanza full of "lips" and "slips,"
"eyes" and "tries," "desires" and "fires," and "darts" and "hearts."

The little white-haired old man leans forward eagerly to catch it all.
But his shoulders slump, and he draws a long, tired breath when the
colonel has finished.

"Man--man," he cries, "what a saddle I could make when I wrote that!"
And he turns wearily to hi