s seemed to the listener the best worth hearing.
The doctor now mounted to the top of the highest pedestal David's
admiration could supply. Here was one of the compensations with which
life keeps the balances even. Joe had died and left him friendless,
and while the ache was still sharp, this stranger and his daughter had
come to soothe his pain, perhaps, in the course of time, to conjure it
quite away.

Early in the preceding winter the doctor had been forced to decide on
the step he had been long contemplating. An attack of congestion of
the lungs developed consumption in his weakened constitution. A warm
climate and an open-air life were prescribed. And how better combine
them than by emigrating to California?

"And so," said the doctor's daughter, "father made up his mind to go
and sold out his practice. People thought he was crazy to start on
such a trip when he was sick, but he knows more than they do. Besides,
it's not going to be such hard work for him. Daddy John, the old man
who drives the mules, knows all about this Western country. He was
here a long time ago when Indiana and Illinois were wild and full of
Indians. He got wounded out here fighting and thought he was going to
die, and came back to New York. My father found him there, poor and
lonely and sick, and took care of him and cured him. He's been with us
ever since, more than twenty years, and he manages everything and takes
care of everything. He and father'll tell you I rule them, but that's
just teasing. It's really Daddy John who rules."

The mules were just behind them, and she looked back at the old man and
called in her clear voice:

"I'm talking about you, Daddy John. I'm telling all about your
wickedness."

Daddy John's answer came back, slow and amused:

"Wait till I get the young feller alone and I'll do some talking."

Laughing, she settled herself in her saddle and dropped her voice for
David's ear:

"I think Daddy John was quite pleased we missed the New York train. It
was a big company, and he couldn't have managed everything the way he
can now. But we'll soon catch it up and then"--she lifted her eyebrows
and smiled with charming malice at the thought of Daddy John's coming
subjugation. "We ought to overtake it in three or four weeks they said
in Independence."

Her companion made no answer. The cheerful conversation had suddenly
taken a depressing turn. Under the spell of Miss Gillespie's loquacity
and