houseward
mindful of the sudden chill which came with the nightfall and of his own
unfitness for exposure.

Proudest of all, "Forty-niner" gathered up the weapons and carried
them off, to clean and put in order for the next evening's practice.
He was well satisfied with his pupil's achievements, though already
planning more difficult feats for their performance. The man was eighty;
yet, while his abundant hair was white, his back was still straight
and his step firm. The joy of his old age was the athletic training
of the Sobrante children, and it would have amazed him, even broken
his heart, had he been told that by such means he did not well earn his
keep. He was eldest of all the elderly workmen that the late master
of the ranch had gathered about him, and his appreciation of this good
home in which to end his days perhaps, the greatest of all. It was,
therefore, a terrible shock which awaited him, as entering his own
room, he lighted his lamp and saw lying on his table a white envelope
addressed to himself.

He knew what it meant. Dismissal.

One year before, when Cassius Trent died, there had been twenty employees
where there were now but thirteen--he the "odd one" of the "baker's
dozen." Seven times, when least expected or desired, some one of these
twenty had found in his room just such an envelope, containing his
arrears of wages, and the curt information that, "by the order of Mrs.
Trent, his services were no longer required at Sobrante, nor would any
wages be forthcoming from that day forward."

These men had all been friends, rather than servants, and in each
case the result had been the same. Cut to the heart by the manner of
discharge, and, for the first time it may be, realizing that he was no
longer young, and, therefore, valuable, the recipient of the envelope had
quietly disappeared, saying farewell to nobody.

"My turn! My turn, at last!" broke from the aged frontiersman's lips,
and a groan followed. "Ten years I've lived in this old adobe cell till
I've come to feel like the monk for whom it was first built. Now----"

The white head drooped forward on the outstretched arms and all the
burden of his eighty years seemed suddenly to have descended upon that
bowed and shrunken figure.

In the pretty dining-room Antonio Bernal had eaten a hearty supper
served by his own mistress, since Wun Lung was not to be found and the
house-boy, Pasqual, claimed his usual recreation hour at the rifle
practice.