"Gives YOU such weight, gives you such background. Is it YOURSELF you
think of? You helper of the helpless. Is that your sincerity? You must
sink yourself; must forget yourself and your own desire of fame, of
admitted success. It is your POEM, your MESSAGE, that must
prevail,--not YOU, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of
self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the
tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem,
but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer
writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the
proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of
the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon the sale of his book."

But Presley would hear no further.

"No," he cried, "I know I am sincere, and to prove it to you, I will
publish my poem, as you say, in the daily press, and I will accept no
money for it."

They talked on for about an hour, while the evening wore away. Presley
very soon noticed that Vanamee was again preoccupied. More than ever
of late, his silence, his brooding had increased. By and by he rose
abruptly, turning his head to the north, in the direction of the Mission
church of San Juan. "I think," he said to Presley, "that I must be
going."

"Going? Where to at this time of night?"

"Off there." Vanamee made an uncertain gesture toward the north.
"Good-bye," and without another word he disappeared in the grey of the
twilight. Presley was left alone wondering. He found his horse, and,
tightening the girths, mounted and rode home under the sheen of the
stars, thoughtful, his head bowed. Before he went to bed that night
he sent "The Toilers" to the Sunday Editor of a daily newspaper in San
Francisco.

Upon leaving Presley, Vanamee, his thumbs hooked into his empty
cartridge belt, strode swiftly down from the hills of the Los Muertos
stock-range and on through the silent town of Guadalajara. His lean,
swarthy face, with its hollow cheeks, fine, black, pointed beard,
and sad eyes, was set to the northward. As was his custom, he was
bareheaded, and the rapidity of his stride made a breeze in his long,
black hair. He knew where he was going. He knew what he must live
through that night.

Again, the deathless grief that never slept leaped out of the shadows,
and fastened upon his shoulders. It was scourging him back to that scene
of a vanished happiness, a dead romance,