e Virginian evidently did not understand, any more than I
did. One hand played with his hat, mechanically turning it round.

The Judge explained. "I mean about Roberts."

A pulse of triumph shot over the Southerner's face, turning it savage
for that fleeting instant. He understood now, and was unable to suppress
this much answer. But he was silent.

"You see," the Judge explained to me, "I was obliged to let Roberts, my
old foreman, go last week. His wife could not have stood another winter
here, and a good position was offered to him near Los Angeles."

I did see. I saw a number of things. I saw why the foreman's house had
been empty to receive Dr. MacBride and me. And I saw that the Judge
had been very clever indeed. For I had abstained from telling any tales
about the present feeling between Trampas and the Virginian; but he had
divined it. Well enough for him to say that "particulars" were something
he let alone; he evidently kept a deep eye on the undercurrents at his
ranch. He knew that in Roberts, Trampas had lost a powerful friend. And
this was what I most saw, this final fact, that Trampas had no longer
any intervening shield. He and the Virginian stood indeed man to man.

"And so," the Judge continued speaking to me, "here I am at a very
inconvenient time without a foreman. Unless," I caught the twinkle in
his eyes before he turned to the Virginian, "unless you're willing to
take the position yourself. Will you?"

I saw the Southerner's hand grip his hat as he was turning it round. He
held it still now, and his other hand found it and gradually crumpled
the soft crown in. It meant everything to him: recognition, higher
station, better fortune, a separate house of his own, and--perhaps--one
step nearer to the woman he wanted. I don't know what words he might
have said to the Judge had they been alone, but the Judge had chosen
to do it in our presence, the whole thing from beginning to end. The
Virginian sat with the damp coming out on his forehead, and his eyes
dropped from his employer's.

"Thank yu'," was what he managed at last to say.

"Well, now, I'm greatly relieved!" exclaimed the Judge, rising at once.
He spoke with haste, and lightly. "That's excellent. I was in some thing
of a hole," he said to Ogden and me; "and this gives me one thing less
to think of. Saves me a lot of particulars," he jocosely added to the
Virginian, who was now also standing up. "Begin right off. Leave the
bunk house. The