t thought the father's face was heavy, except for the
eyes that were fixed upon his son.

"Van Loo came to the Mission," he said suddenly.

The boy's eyes glittered quickly, like a steel that pierced the father's
heart. "Oh," he said simply, "then it was the padre told you?"

"How did he know you were here?" asked Steptoe.

"I don't know," said the boy quietly. "I think he said something, but
I've forgotten it. But it was mighty good of him to come, for I thought,
you know, that he did not care to see me after Heavy Tree, and that he'd
gone back on us."

"What did he tell you?" continued Steptoe. "Did he talk of me or of your
mother?"

"No," said the boy, but without any show of interest or sympathy; "we
talked mostly about old times."

"Tell ME about those old times, Eddy. You never told me anything about
them."

The boy, momentarily arrested more by something in the tone of his
father's voice--a weakness he had never noticed before--than by any
suggestion of his words, said with a laugh, "Oh, only about what we
used to do when I was very little and used to call myself his 'little
brother,'--don't you remember, long before the big strike on Heavy Tree?
They were gay times we had then."

"And how he used to teach you to imitate other people's handwriting?"
said Steptoe.

"What made you think of that, pop?" said the boy, with a slight wonder
in his eyes. "Why, that's the very thing we DID talk about."

"But you didn't do it again; you ain't done it since," said Steptoe
quickly.

"Lord! no," said the boy contemptuously. "There ain't no chance now, and
there wouldn't be any fun in it. It isn't like the old times when him
and me were all alone, and we used to write letters as coming from other
people to all the boys round Heavy Tree and the Bar, and sometimes as
far as Boomville, to get them to do things, and they'd think the letters
were real, and they'd do 'em. And there'd be the biggest kind of a row,
and nobody ever knew who did it."

Steptoe stared at this flesh of his own flesh half in relief, half in
frightened admiration. Sitting astride the log, his elbows on his knees
and his gloved hands supporting his round cheeks, the boy's handsome
face became illuminated with an impish devilry which the father had
never seen before. With dancing eyes he went on. "It was one of those
very games we played so long ago that he wanted to see me about and
wanted me to keep mum about, for some of the folks that he p