“Is it, honey?” inquired the old man, easily. “Oh, I guess I wouldn’t worry about ’em. Remember that we don’t ever butcher ’em, nor even brand ’em.” “That’s part of the sadness,” Hilda maintained, shaking her head. “It’s just like I used to want to cry when I saw the little dwarfed people in the shows, that aren’t children, and never will be grown up.” Into the long talks which the two held together of an evening, Hilda often introduced that hero who never had any other name than The-Boy-On-The-Train. “He knew most everything, Uncle Hank,” she once declared. “I reckon so, honey,” assented Pearsall; but he seemed to Hilda not sufficiently impressed. She sought in her recollection for definite marvels to attribute to this favorite, and came hard up against that trying fact we all meet, that you cannot communicate to another the fascination you have experienced. It is something to be felt, not put into words. Pressed thus, Hilda stated one day to Uncle Hank that her hero could understand the language of birds. He accepted it with much too great facility, reconciled thereto by the fact that a person in Hilda’s book of fairy tales, which she had shown him earlier in the evening, could do the same. But the statement kept its author awake the greater part of the night, and a penitent, small Hilda climbed up into his arms as soon as he sat down after supper next evening and explained: “Why, Uncle Hank, you know The-Boy-On-The-Train, he couldn’t quite—what I said—understand all that the birds were talking about.” “Couldn’t he, Pettie?” inquired Hank placidly. “No,” said Hilda with solemnity. “He might just as well have, but he couldn’t. He could just understand what people said; but—” The small face flushed deeply; word forms rushed fluidly about in the stress and flux of her emotion—“but he understanded that awful good.” If Hilda had come to a group of children, The-Boy-On-The-Train must have grown dim behind the stirring realities of actual companionship. But in the lonely life that began for her now, he filled in many an hour which might be otherwise forlorn. He did not lose vividness. She saw him at that ranch he had spoken of, riding the marvelous pony which would shake hands, perfecting himself in those manly sports upon which he had casually touched, and which her lively fancy was liberally providing for him. As time went on, he grew of course; yet he remained delightfully a boy, her champion and hero in the dream world which was always so real to the imaginative child. Meanwhile Pearsall, who had been for some time manager for a non-resident owner, had only remained to go over tallies, count of stock, and deliver to the purchaser the ranch and its appurtenances. This work was done now, the details all complete, and upon an evening Hank had brought his tally sheets and the mass of statements and figures to young Van Brunt in the ranch office, where he sat explaining the situation patiently to the other man.