ing with it, joyous
as the dawn itself.

Then it was Los Muertos and Hooven, the sordid little Dutchman, grimed
with the soil he worked in, yet vividly remembering a period of military
glory, exciting himself with recollections of Gravelotte and the
Kaiser, but contented now in the country of his adoption, defining the
Fatherland as the place where wife and children lived. Then came the
ranch house of Los Muertos, under the grove of cypress and eucalyptus,
with its smooth, gravelled driveway and well-groomed lawns; Mrs. Derrick
with her wide-opened eyes, that so easily took on a look of uneasiness,
of innocence, of anxious inquiry, her face still pretty, her brown hair
that still retained so much of its brightness spread over her chair
back, drying in the sun; Magnus, erect as an officer of cavalry,
smooth-shaven, grey, thin-lipped, imposing, with his hawk-like nose and
forward-curling grey hair; Presley with his dark face, delicate mouth
and sensitive, loose lips, in corduroys and laced boots, smoking
cigarettes--an interesting figure, suggestive of a mixed origin, morbid,
excitable, melancholy, brooding upon things that had no names. Then
it was Bonneville, with the gayety and confusion of Main Street,
the whirring electric cars, the zinc-sheathed telegraph poles, the
buckboards with squashes stowed under the seats; Ruggles in frock coat,
Stetson hat and shoe-string necktie, writing abstractedly upon his
blotting pad; Dyke, the engineer, big-boned. Powerful, deep-voiced,
good-natured, with his fine blonde beard and massive arms, rehearsing
the praises of his little daughter Sidney, guided only by the one
ambition that she should be educated at a seminary, slipping a dime into
the toe of her diminutive slipper, then, later, overwhelmed with shame,
slinking into S. Behrman's office to mortgage his homestead to the
heeler of the corporation that had discharged him. By suggestion,
Annixter saw S. Behrman, too, fat, with a vast stomach, the check and
neck meeting to form a great, tremulous jowl, the roll of fat over his
collar, sprinkled with sparse, stiff hairs; saw his brown, round-topped
hat of varnished straw, the linen vest stamped with innumerable
interlocked horseshoes, the heavy watch chain, clinking against the
pearl vest buttons; invariably placid, unruffled, never losing his
temper, serene, unassailable, enthroned.

Then, at the end of all, it was the ranch again, seen in a last brief
glance before he had gone