position some day--God knows, perhaps soon!
I should not have allowed him to run over this wild country for so
long. But I hoped, though I hardly believed, that he might find
himself. Now I'm afraid he's--"

Mr. Gale paused and the white hand he raised expressively shook a
little.

Belding was not so thick-witted where men were concerned. He saw how
the matter lay between Dick Gale and his father.

"Well, Mr. Gale, sure most young bucks from the East go to the bad out
here," he said, bluntly.

"I've been told that," replied Mr. Gale; and a shade overspread his
worn face.

"They blow their money, then go punching cows, take to whiskey."

"Yes," rejoined Mr. Gale, feebly nodding.

"Then they get to gambling, lose their jobs," went on Belding.

Mr. Gale lifted haggard eyes.

"Then it's bumming around, regular tramps, and to the bad generally."
Belding spread wide his big arms, and when one of them dropped round
Nell, who sat beside him, she squeezed his hand tight. "Sure, it's the
regular thing," he concluded, cheerfully.

He rather felt a little glee at Mr. Gale's distress, and Mrs. Gale's
crushed I-told-you-so woe in no wise bothered him; but the look in the
big, dark eyes of Dick's sister was too much for Belding.

He choked off his characteristic oath when excited and blurted out,
"Say, but Dick Gale never went to the bad!... Listen!"

Belding had scarcely started Dick Gale's story when he perceived that
never in his life had he such an absorbed and breathless audience.
Presently they were awed, and at the conclusion of that story they sat
white-faced, still, amazed beyond speech. Dick Gale's advent in
Casita, his rescue of Mercedes, his life as a border ranger certainly
lost no picturesque or daring or even noble detail in Belding's
telling. He kept back nothing but the present doubt of Dick's safety.

Dick's sister was the first of the three to recover herself.

"Oh, father!" she cried; and there was a glorious light in her eyes.
"Deep down in my heart I knew Dick was a man!"

Mr. Gale rose unsteadily from his chair. His frailty was now painfully
manifest.

"Mr. Belding, do you mean my son--Richard Gale--has done all that you
told us?" he asked, incredulously.

"I sure do," replied Belding, with hearty good will.

"Martha, do you hear?" Mr. Gale turned to question his wife. She
could not answer. Her face had not yet regained its natural color.

"He faced that bandit and his gang alo