te, which was one
night at Richard Horn's. But let us close that chapter too, my boy. You
and I will take a new lease of life from now on. You have already put
fresh blood into my veins--I haven't felt so well for weeks. Now tell
me about yourself. Your last letter reached me six months ago, if
I remember right. You were then in Rio and were going up into the
mountains. Did you go?"

"Yes--up into the Rio Abaste country where they had discovered diamonds
as big as hens' eggs--one had been sold for nearly a quarter of a
million dollars--and everybody was crazy. I didn't find any diamonds nor
anything else but starvation, so I herded cattle, that being the only
thing I knew anything about--how to ride--and slept out on the lowlands
sometimes under a native mat and sometimes under the kindly stars. Then
we had a revolution and cattle raids, and one night I came pretty near
being chewed up by a puma--and so it went. I made a little money in
rawhides after I got to know the natives, and I'm going back to make
some more; and you are going with me when we get things straightened
out. I wouldn't have come home except that I heard you had been turned
out neck and crop from Kennedy Square. One of Mr. Seymour's clerks
stopped in Rio on his way to the River Plate and did some business with
an English agent whom I met afterward at a hacienda, and who told me
about you when he learned I was from Kennedy Square. And when I think
of it all, Uncle George, and what you have suffered on account of
me!"--Here his voice faltered. "No!--I won't talk about it--I can't.
I have spent too many sleepless nights over it: I have been hungry and
half dead, but I have kept on--and I am not through: I'll pull out yet
and put you on your feet once more if I live!"

St. George laid his hand tenderly on the young man's wrist. He knew how
the boy felt about it. That was one of the things he loved him for.

"And so you started home when you heard it," he went on, clearing his
throat. "That was just like you, you dear fellow! And you haven't come
home an hour too soon. I should have been measured for a pine coffin in
another week." The choke was quite in evidence now. "You see, I really
couldn't go to Coston's when I thought it all over. I had made up
my mind to go for a week or so until I saw this place, and then I
determined I would stop with Jemima. I could eke out an existence here
on what I had left and still feel like a gentleman, but I couldn't
se