ut Trampas."

Presently Scipio rose, and noticed the half-finished exercise upon the
Virginian's desk. "Trampas is a rolling stone," he said.

"A rolling piece of mud," corrected the Virginian.

"Mud! That's right. I'm a rolling stone. Sometimes I'd most like to quit
being."

"That's easy done," said the Virginian.

"No doubt, when yu've found the moss yu' want to gather." As Scipio
glanced at the school books again, a sparkle lurked in his bleached blue
eye. "I can cipher some," he said. "But I expect I've got my own notions
about spelling."

"I retain a few private ideas that way myself," remarked the Virginian,
innocently; and Scipio's sparkle gathered light.

"As to my geography," he pursued, "that's away out loose in the brush.
Is Bennington the capital of Vermont? And how d' yu' spell bridegroom?"

"Last point!" shouted the Virginian, letting a book fly after him:
"don't let badness and goodness worry yu', for yu'll never be a judge of
them."

But Scipio had dodged the book, and was gone. As he went his way, he
said to himself, "All the same, it must pay to fall regular in love."
At the bunk house that afternoon it was observed that he was unusually
silent. His exit from the foreman's cabin had let in a breath of winter
so chill that the Virginian went to see his thermometer, a Christmas
present from Mrs. Henry. It registered twenty below zero. After reviving
the fire to a white blaze, the foreman sat thinking over the story
of Shorty: what its useless, feeble past had been; what would be its
useless, feeble future. He shook his head over the sombre question,
Was there any way out for Shorty? "It may be," he reflected, "that them
whose pleasure brings yu' into this world owes yu' a living. But that
don't make the world responsible. The world did not beget you. I reckon
man helps them that help themselves. As for the universe, it looks like
it did too wholesale a business to turn out an article up to standard
every clip. Yes, it is sorrowful. For Shorty is kind to his hawss."

In the evening the Virginian brought Shorty into his room. He usually
knew what he had to say, usually found it easy to arrange his thoughts;
and after such arranging the words came of themselves. But as he looked
at Shorty, this did not happen to him. There was not a line of badness
in the face; yet also there was not a line of strength; no promise in
eye, or nose, or chin; the whole thing melted to a stubby, featureless
mediocri