erts shifted his head, looking at his silent
listener steadily. "What do you fancy was that name he called, Elice?"

Elice Gleason started involuntarily, and settled back in her place.

"I haven't the slightest idea, of course."

"It wasn't an ordinary name. At that time I'd never heard it before."

"I'm not good at guessing."

Roberts shifted back to his old position.

"It was 'Elice.' 'Elice, come,' he said.

"The daughter hesitated. I imagine she wanted to ask me several things
yet,--whether I had cloven feet, for instance, and lived on spiders; but
she didn't. She went back to the other three and they moved on. That was
the last I saw of them.

"I worked the rest of that day, did about three men's work, I remember.
That night I drew my pay and went to bed; but I didn't go to sleep. I
did a lot of thinking and made up my mind to something. I decided I'd
been the under dog long enough. I haven't changed the opinion since. Next
day I saw the sun when it was straight overhead and soaked the coal dust
out of my skin--as much as possible.... That's all of the fourth
stage.... Hadn't I better stop?"

The girl shook her head, but still without looking at him.

"No; I want to learn what you did after that, after you woke up."

"I went West. I hadn't seen the sun or the sky for so long that I was
hungry for it. In Omaha I fell in with a bunch of cattlemen and, as I
always liked to handle stock, that settled it. I accepted an offer as
herder; they didn't call it that, but it amounted to the same. I had a
half-dozen ponies, rations for six months, and something under a thousand
head of stock to look after. By comparison it wasn't work at all; only I
was all alone and it took all the time, day and night. I didn't sleep
under a roof half a dozen nights from July to October. When the cattle
bunched at night I simply rolled up in a blanket where they were and
watched the stars until I forgot them; the next thing I knew it was
morning. I had hours to read in though, hours and hours; and that was
another thing I was after. For I could read, I wasn't quite illiterate,
and I was dead in earnest at last. When the Fall round-up came I quit and
went to Denver, and portered in a big hotel and went to night school.

"There isn't much to tell after this. I drifted all over the West and the
Southwest during the next few years. I got the mining fever and
prospected in Colorado and California and Arizona; but I never struck
anythin