he Virginian nodded. "It gives all the peace o' being asleep with all
the pleasure o' feeling the widest kind of awake," said he. "Yu' might
say the whole year's strength flows hearty in every waggle of your
thumb." We lay still for a while. "How many things surprise yu' any
more?" he next asked.

I began considering; but his silence had at length worked round to
speech.

"Inventions, of course," said he, "these hyeh telephones an' truck yu'
see so much about in the papers--but I ain't speaking o' such things
of the brain. It is just the common things I mean. The things that a
livin', noticin' man is liable to see and maybe sample for himself. How
many o' them kind can surprise yu' still?"

I still considered.

"Most everything surprised me onced," the cow-puncher continued, in his
gentle Southern voice. "I must have been a mighty green boy. Till I
was fourteen or fifteen I expect I was astonished by ten o'clock every
morning. But a man begins to ketch on to folks and things after a while.
I don't consideh that when--that afteh a man is, say twenty-five, it is
creditable he should get astonished too easy. And so yu've not examined
yourself that-away?"

I had not.

"Well, there's two things anyway--I know them for sure--that I expect
will always get me--don't care if I live to thirty-five, or forty-five,
or eighty. And one's the ways lightning can strike." He paused. Then
he got up and kicked the fire, and stood by it, staring at me. "And the
other is the people that other people will marry."

He stopped again; and I said nothing.

"The people that other people will marry," he repeated. "That will
surprise me till I die."

"If my sympathy--" I began.

But the brief sound that he gave was answer enough, and more than enough
cure for my levity.

"No," said he, reflectively; "not any such thing as a fam'ly for me,
yet. Never, it may be. Not till I can't help it. And that woman has
not come along so far. But I have been sorry for a woman lately. I keep
thinking what she will do. For she will have to do something. Do yu'
know Austrians? Are they quick in their feelings, like I-talians? Or
are they apt to be sluggish, same as Norwegians and them other
Dutch-speakin' races?"

I told him what little I knew about Austrians.

"This woman is the first I have ever saw of 'em," he continued. "Of
course men will stampede into marriage in this hyeh Western country,
where a woman is a scanty thing. It ain't what Hank h