ting that bed might prove more comfortable; and, finding how it
was, rose and undressed the boy and laid him between the sheets. The
arms and legs seemed aware of the moves required of them, and stirred
conveniently; and directly the head was upon the pillow the whole small
frame burrowed down, without the opening of an eye or a change in the
breathing. Lin stood some time by the bedside, with his eyes on the
long, curling lashes and the curly hair. Then he glanced craftily at the
door of the room, and at himself in the looking-glass. He stooped and
kissed Billy on the forehead, and, rising from that, gave himself a
hangdog stare in the mirror, and soon in his own bed was sleeping the
sound sleep of health.

He was faintly roused by the church bells, and lay still, lingering
with his sleep, his eyes closed, and his thoughts unshaped. As he became
slowly aware of the morning, the ringing and the light reached him, and
he waked wholly, and, still lying quiet, considered the strange room
filled with the bells and the sun of the winter's day. "Where have I
struck now?" he inquired; and as last night returned abruptly upon his
mind, he raised himself on his arm.

There sat Responsibility in a chair, washed clean and dressed, watching
him.

"You're awful late," said Responsibility. "But I weren't a-going without
telling you good-bye."

"Go?" exclaimed Lin. "Go where? Yu' surely ain't leavin' me to eat
breakfast alone?" The cow-puncher made his voice very plaintive. Set
Responsibility free after all his trouble to catch him? This was more
than he could do!

"I've got to go. If I'd thought you'd want for me to stay--why, you said
you was a-going by the early train!"

"But the durned thing's got away on me," said Lin, smiling sweetly from
the bed.

"If I hadn't a-promised them--"

"Who?"

"Sidney Ellis and Pete Goode. Why, you know them; you grubbed with
them."

"Shucks!"

"We're a-going to have fun to-day."

"Oh!"

"For it's Christmas, an' we've bought some good cigars, an' Pete says
he'll learn me sure. O' course I've smoked some, you know. But I'd just
as leaves stayed with you if I'd only knowed sooner. I wish you lived
here. Did you smoke whole big cigars when you was beginning?"

"Do you like flapjacks and maple syrup?" inquired the artful McLean.
"That's what I'm figuring on inside twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes! If they'd wait--"

"See here, Bill. They've quit expecting yu', don't yu' think? I'd