d himself.

Celia was not to blame for leaving him. He had long ago come to that
conclusion. He was a failure, as she had said. Women as a rule do not
care for failures, though there are some few who do.

They love men who succeed.

In personal appearance, aside from some angularities, considerable
gauntness, and much sunburn, Seth told himself that he was not
different from other men. It was not palpable to the casual observer
that as men went he was a failure, but Seth realized the truth of
Celia's judgment.

He had failed doubly. In the effort to provide her a home, and to
imbue her with his belief in the Magic City. Since she had gone home
he had sent her next to no money. He had none to send. Perhaps that
was why she did not write. He never knew. Putting himself in her
place, he concluded she was right. A delicate little woman, far away
from a great failure of a husband who could not provide for her, ought
to let him go without letters.

And so thinking, he seldom hung about the post-office waiting for the
mail. He trained himself to expect nothing.

Yes. It had been impossible for him to send her money.

Disaster had followed disaster and he had been barely able to keep
himself and the boy alive.

He was a failure of the most deplorable sort, but the boy did not know
it. He did not even guess it. The standing monument of his failure in
life to Celia was the dugout. In the eyes of the boy it was no failure
at all. Born in it he had no idea of the luxury of a house and the
luxuries we wot not of we miss not.

He was used to lizards on the roof, to say nothing of other creeping
things within the house which are generally regarded as obnoxious,
roaches, ants, mice. He rather liked them than otherwise, regarding
them as his private possessions.

Besides, hadn't he Cyclona?

And as for the winds of which Celia complained so bitterly, he loved
them. His ears had never been out of the sound of them and they were
very gentle winds sometimes, tender and loving with their own child
born on the desert. They lulled him. They cradled him. They were sweet
as Cyclona's voice singing him to sleep.

In another State, where they failed to blow, it would in all
probability have been necessary to entice a cyclone into his
neighborhood to induce him to slumber.

Accustomed to the infinite tenderness of his father's care from the
first, the boy loved him. Seth determined that if it were possible,
this state of affairs