"Ha! dreaming," he cried. "I can see it in your face. But you can afford to dream. Keep your seat. I don't care to sit down. Well, Sir, old Zeb Harkrider hailed me this morning to tell me that a good many of our citizens didn't like our show. I said: 'Look here, Zeb, I thought I kicked you off the courthouse steps for bringing me news that I didn't want to hear a long time ago. Don't you remember it?' He remembered. He didn't say so, but he stepped back. 'Why, I didn't know you were interested in it,' said he. I had to lie just a little, Belford. I hold, Sir, that we are justified in occasionally slipping a lie on our left arm and using it for a shield, to protect our private grounds against invasion. Yes, I lied to him a little; I told him that my only interest lay in the fact that it was my desire to see our people well entertained, and that the habit of constant grumbling would finally blind us to the beauties of even the best of things. So I got rid of him. And do you realize that Petticord didn't do us justice? Confound his insolence, you passed in his entire brigade, and yet he says that only those who were easily pleased came near getting the worth of their money. That scoundrel suspects that I have a hand in this, and he would almost be willing to cut his own throat in order to do me a harmful turn. But I will get him one of these days--yes, Sir, I'll get him or drive him out of this community. My boy, you don't seem to be in very good spirits. What's the matter? Getting tired of Bolanyo?" I answered with what the humorist of the "profession" would have phrased a "property laugh." "No, Senator, I am not getting tired. In fact, I would rather be here than in any place under the sun." "Strong, but that's right. I was afraid that you felt yourself chained." "You might fasten me here with links of rusty iron, but in my eyes they'd be a chain of gold." "What's that?" He startled me with the sharp eye of comprehension, and I felt myself droop under the look that he gave me. "I mean that this soft and restful air and the sweet breath of the gardens would exalt a soul in spite of the restraints of the body." Innocence flew back to his eye, "That's good, Belford; I have felt it many a time. I have thought in moments of ambition that my talents as a Legislator were crippled here, that I might go to Congress, and perhaps make a National name for myself, but then came the idea that to broaden my scope might forever spoil my love for old Bolanyo." He stood there meditating, with nothing more to say; he took out a small bunch of keys, looked at them and returned them to his pocket; he put his hands behind him; he went to the window and looked out upon the deliberate commerce of the town--wagons loaded with hay, carts of kindling wood, negroes with chickens, groups of story-telling countrymen.