ough to know, perhaps, but of no real use to make a
living, which is what I have to do. And meanwhile the ranch would be run
down and the ground be worked out and dirty with weeds. And then there
is my promise to my father. I am taking his place as well as I can; and
that place is on the ranch."

"I see," said the judge thoughtfully. "You may be right, my boy. Many a
good rancher has been spoilt to make a poor something else. The
professions are crowded with failures. But let's go back to the point:
Whether Braden has or has not the power to rent the ranch and sell
stock, is immaterial so long as it is not done. I will see him, and I
think I can explain the situation to him perhaps more clearly than you
can. How old are you?"

"Eighteen," Angus replied. "I wish I was older."

The judge looked at him and sighed. "Believe this," he said; "that when
you are older--much older--you will wish much more and just as vainly to
be eighteen. It's three years before you come of age. Even then--" He
broke off and for a moment was silent. "Angus, you are a close-mouthed
boy. If in the future you have any trouble with Braden, or if he or
anybody else makes you any proposition involving the ranch, will you
come to me with it?"

"I'll be very glad to," Angus told him gratefully.

"All right. And, Angus, I'm going to give you a word of advice, which
may sound strange from me. Never drink. Never start. Not only not now,
but five years hence, nor ten, nor thirty, nor forty."

"I don't intend to," Angus said, in surprise. "I don't think I'd ever
drink much. There isn't anything in it, it seems to me."

"You're wrong," the judge told him gravely. "You know nothing about it.
In youth there is pleasure in it, and good fellowship that warms the
heart, and bright eyes and soft lips--which you know nothing about
yet--and dreams of ambition and temporary equality with the gods; and
later in life there are the faces and voices of old friends, of men and
women dead before their time, and the golden past and golden youth leaps
and lives again, and the present is forgotten. And at last--Do you know
what there is at last, Angus?"

"No, sir," said the boy with equal gravity. "What is there?"

"Damnation!" the judge replied slowly. "Damnation, deep and living. The
damnation of those who knowing the better have chosen the worse; who
living the worse can yet see the better and the great gulf fixed
between. The hell of the hereafter--phutt!" And t