e like a glove," said Milford.

"Good!" cried the Professor. "Idiomatic, and divested of all shrewdness.
Now, what shall we do first?"

"I'll hatch up a bite to eat, and then we'll feed the stock. You sit
here."

He protested against a decree that might make a lazy guest of him, but
he yielded, and sat down to hum a tune of contentment, pliant heart
postponing trouble, procrastinator of annoyances. It did not take
Milford long to prepare the meal, crisp strips of bacon, bread, and
coffee boiled in a tin pail. The host said that it was but ranch fare.
The guest rubbed his hands together, and declared that freedom was a
pudding's sweetest sauce. He had read of many great feasts, in the days
of the barons, when bulls were roasted whole, of the wild boar's head
served upon the golden platter of the king, but to him there was one
banquet mellower with sentiment than all the rest--General Marion and
the British officer in the forest, with a pile of roasted sweet potatoes
on a log. He sipped the dreggy coffee as if it were the mulled wine of a
New Year's night. He talked loudly as if he enjoyed the resonant freedom
of his own voice. He laughed in the present, and then was silent as a
cool shadow of the future fell upon him. But he shifted from under the
shadow, and went on with his talk, in florid congratulation of his host,
his ease, his independence. There were no soft cushions, but there was
rough repose, the undisturbed rest of honest weariness. Milford's
judgment of men told him that this man had ever been a laughing-stock,
afflicted as he was with a certain incompetent refinement of mind. But,
in the varied society of life, how important is the office of such a
failure! A shiftless man sometimes makes shiftless men more contented,
softening enmities against life, and quieting clamors against
discriminating nature. Here was a man who really was worth knowing, and
the cowboy gratefully accepted him. He opened up his Noah's Ark of
adventures, and entertained the man-child. He shoved back from the
table, and sang a roaring song of a plainsman who died for love. He
recited a poem by Antrobus, the herdsman's sneer of abandoned
recklessness--"Like a Centaur, he speeds where the wild bull feeds." The
Professor clapped his hands. He swore that no Eastcheap could afford a
more delicious entertainment. Milford brought cider from the cellar,
beading in a brown, earthen ewer, and the Professor snapped his eyes.
"Where the wild bul