he bees and the flowers? Are people in the
cities happy and contented without them? I've often wondered. I suppose
some day I'll be going to the city to live, as all the other boys have
done; but when I think of it it makes me sad. I don't believe I'd ever be
happy in the city, mother, unless--"

He paused long enough to stir up the fire and put on another log.

"Unless what, Willis?" his mother inquired.

"Unless--" he hesitated as if thinking. "I could go West to where father
was."

His mother listened as he went on. "The schoolmaster was telling us today
about the wonderful Rocky Mountains. He was there last summer on his
vacation, you know. We were studying about Pike's Peak and the Garden of
the Gods, so he told us all about his trip there. He went from Colorado
Springs to somewhere away up in the mountains to a great gold camp. He
told us of the queer little shanties the people live in, and of the great
piles of waste ore outside of each mine. He went through one mine, the
Independence, I think he called it, or the Portland--I don't remember
which now; but he said the machinery used in hoisting the ore was
wonderful. It all set me to thinking of father--I've been thinking of him
all day. Mother, it's mighty hard for a fellow like me not to have any
father, only just a dead one."

He arose a second time to replenish the fire, but remained standing,
facing his mother. He was too deeply interested in his own thoughts just
then to notice the tears that were slowly stealing down his mother's
face, and the light was too dim for him to see her sad, care-worn
expression. She was not old, but fate had not been kind to her. She was a
slender little woman, with a heavy mass of what had once been brown hair,
but it was now streaked with gray. Her eyes were large and brown, and the
intermingled expression of love and sadness made her face one of tender
beauty, lighted as it was by the rosy tints from the open fire. As the
boy talked on in his manly way she suddenly became aware of a change in
him. She noticed the well-built and symmetrically developed body, the
broad shoulders, the short, stocky neck, and the head covered with brown
ringlets. She could not see the face, but she knew only too well of whom
it reminded her, for of late she had often found herself saying, "Just
like the father--just like the father."

It was during such winter evenings as this that she had come to know her
son best, as she sat on the arm of