s nose far forward, laid
his long ears back upon his neck, planted his little legs firmly, and
as he erected in triumph his scrag of a tail, he uttered a most
thunderous bray. "And now, Wise One," Pablo said, tenderly, as he
infolded the head of the ass in his arms and hugged it to his breast,
"thou knowest that we not only love thee for thy goodness and thy
wisdom, but that we also honor thee for thy noble deeds."

Rayburn's fancy was mightily tickled by this performance in which El
Sabio and Pablo and I had engaged--though Young evidently thought it but
another proof of the addled state of my brains--when I told about it
that evening as we all sat smoking comfortably in my library before the
open fire. This was to be our last meeting for some time to come; for
Rayburn was to start the next day for Idaho to look after some mining
matters, and Young suddenly had decided that he would accompany him. In
truth, Young was rather at a loss to know what to do with himself; for
his plan for buying the Old Colony Railroad, in order to be in a
position to discharge its superintendent, had been abandoned. "I'd like
t' do it, of course," he said. "Bouncin' that chump th' same way that he
bounced me would do me a lot o' good; but I've made up my mind it
wouldn't be th' square thing t' do, considerin' that if he hadn't
bounced me I'd still be foolin' round on top o' freight-cars, in all
sorts o' weather, handlin' brakes. So I've let up on him, an' he can
stay. What I want now is t' do some good with this all-fired big pile o'
money that I've got. That's one reason why I'm goin' out with Rayburn t'
Idaho. Right straight along from here t' Boise City I mean t' set up
drinks for every railroader I meet. That'll be doin' good, for sure."

[Illustration: IN THE LIBRARY BEFORE THE OPEN FIRE]

Rayburn and I laughed a little at this odd method for benefiting
humanity that Young had got hold of; and then Rayburn's face grew grave
as he said: "Well, we're doing a little good, I suppose, in putting that
old church in Morelia in good shape. I'm glad you thought of that,
Professor. I don't suppose that anything we could have done would have
pleased the Padre more than to have that church, that he loved so much,
made as handsome as money can make it all the way through."

"Yes," Young added, "an' I guess th' Professor's head was level in
havin' all th' new stuff that we've put in it made t' look like 't was
about two hundred years old. I did k