. Pap had his weakness. He liked to
babble of his own cuteness; he liked to sit upon a sugar barrel in the
village store and talk of savoury viands, so to speak, and sparkling
wines in the presence of fellow-citizens who lacked bread and water,
particularly water.

One day, in late March, he came into the store as the sun was setting.
In such a village as ours, at such a time, the store becomes the club
of the community. Misery, who loves company, spent many hours at the
store. There was nothing to do on the range.

Upon this particular afternoon we had listened to a new tale of
disaster. Till now, although most of us had lost stock, and many had
lost land as well, we had regarded health, the rude health of man
living the primal life, as an inalienable possession. Our cattle and
horses were dying, but we lived. We learned that diphtheria had
entered Paradise.

In those early days, before the antitoxin treatment of the disease,
diphtheria in Southern California was the deadliest of plagues. It
attacked children for the most part, and swept them away in
battalions. I have seen whole families exterminated.

And nothing, then as now, prevails against this scourge save prompt
and sustained medical treatment. In Paradise we had neither doctor,
nor nurse, nor drugs. San Lorenzo, the nearest town, lay twenty-six
miles away.

Pap shambled in, clicking his teeth and grinning.

"Nice evenin'," he observed, taking his seat on his sugar barrel.

"Puffec'ly lovely," replied the man who had brought the evil news.
"Everything," he stretched out his lean hand,--"everything smilin' an'
gay--an' merry as a marriage bell."

Pap rubbed his talon-like hands together.

"Boys," said he, "I done first-rate this afternoon--I done first-
rate. I've made money, a wad of it--and don't you forget it."

"You never allow us to forget it," said Ajax. "We all wish you would,"
he added pointedly.

"Eh?"

He stared at my brother. The other men in the store showed their teeth
in a sort of pitiful, snarling grin. Each was sensible of a secret
pleasure that somebody else had dared to bell the cat.

My brother continued, curtly: "This is not the time nor the place for
you to buck about what you've done and whom you've done. Under the
present circumstances--you're an old man--what you've left undone
ought to be engrossing your attention."

"Meanin'?"

Pap had glanced furtively from face to face, reading in each rough
countenance derision a