slope.
They turned our team square across the way and in mock stage-robbery
style called a halt. The driver threw up his hands in mock terror and
begged for mercy, which was granted if he would deliver up one Philip
Baronet, student and tenderfoot. But I was already down from the stage
and O'mie was hugging me hard until Bud Anderson pulled him away and all
the boys and girls were around me. Oh, it was good to see them all
again, but best of all was it to see Marjie. She had been a pretty
picture of a young girl. She was beautiful now. No wonder she had many
admirers. She was last among the girls to greet me. I took her hand and
our eyes met. Oh, I had no fear of widower nor of school-teacher, as I
helped her to a seat beside me in the stage.

"I'm so glad to see you again, Phil," she looked up into my face. "You
are bigger than ever."

"And you are just the same Marjie."

The crowd piled promiscuously about us and we bumped down the slope and
into the gurgling Neosho, laughing and happy.

With all the rough and tumble years of a boyhood and youth on the
frontier, the West has been good to me, and I look back along the way
glad that mine was the pioneer's time, and that the experiences of those
early days welded into my building and being something of their
simplicity, and strength, and capacity for enjoyment. But of all the
seasons along the way of these sixty years, of all the successes and
pleasures, I remember best and treasure most that glorious summer after
my return from the East. My father was on the Judge's bench now and his
legal interests and property interests were growing. I began the study
of law under him at once, and my duties were many, for he put
responsibility on me from the first. But I was in the very heyday of
life, and had no wish ungratified.

"Phil, I want you to go up the river and take a look at two quarters of
Section 29, range 14, this afternoon. It lies just this side of the big
cottonwood," my father said to me one June day.

"Make a special note of the land, and its natural appurtenances. I want
the information at once, or you needn't go out on such a hot day. It's
like a furnace in the courthouse. It may be cooler out that way." He
fanned his face with his straw hat, and the light breeze coming up the
valley lifted the damp hair about his temples.

"There's a bridle path over the bluff a mile or so out, where you can
ride a horse down and go up the river in the bottom. It's a muc