lly belonged
to him.

Yes, Buck was a good lad.

The thought carried him back to days long gone by, to a time when a
lad of something less than eight years, clad in the stained and worn
garb of a prairie juvenile, his feet torn and bleeding, his large
brown eyes staring out of gaunt, hungry sockets, his thin, pinched,
sunburnt face drawn by the ravages of starvation, had cheerfully
hailed him from beneath the shelter of a trail-side bush.

That was nearly twenty years ago, but every detail of the meeting was
still fresh in his memory. His horse had shied at the sudden
challenge. He remembered he had thrashed the creature with his spurs.
And promptly had come the youthful protest.

"Say, you needn't to lick him, mister," the boy piped in his thin
treble. "Guess he'll stand if you talk to him."

Strangely enough the man had almost unconsciously obeyed the mandate.
And the memory of it made him smile now. Then had followed a dialogue,
which even now had power to stir every sympathy of his heart. He
started by casually questioning the starving apparition.

"Where you from, sonny?" he asked.

And with that unequivocal directness, which, after twenty years, still
remained with him, the boy flung out a thin arm in the direction of
the eastern horizon.

"Back ther', mister."

The natural sequence was to ask him whither he was bound, and his
answer came with a similar gesture with his other hand westward.

"Yonder."

"But--but who're your folks? Where are they?" the Padre had next
hazarded. And a world of desolation was contained in the lad's
half-tearful reply--

"Guess I ain't got none. Pop an' ma's dead. Our farm was burnt right
out. Y' see there was a prairie fire. It was at night, an' we was
abed. Pop got me out, an' went back for ma. I never see him agin. I
never see ma. An' ther' wa'an't no farm left. Guess they're sure
dead."

He fought the tears back manfully, in a way that set the Padre
marveling at his courage.

After a moment he continued his interrogation.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Buck," came the frank response.

"Buck--what?"

"Buck--jest plain, mister."

"But your father's name--what was that?"

"Pop."

"Yes, yes. That's what you called him. What did the folks call him?"

"Ther' wa'an't no folks. Jest pop, an' ma, an' me."

A great lump had risen in the man's throat as he looked down into
those honest, hungry eyes. And for a moment he was at a loss. But the
boy solved his