“Do you know what this young fellow did, four years ago this last spring? I tried to cross the river near my place in a little boat, while the water was high. Bennett, here, came along and swore that a man with no more sense than I had ought to drown--which was very true, I admit. I had just got out a nice little distance for drowning properly, when a tree came bobbing along and upset my boat, and Kid Bennett, as we called him then, rode in as far as he could--which was a great deal further than was safe for him--and roped me, just as he would have roped a yearling. Ha! ha! I can see him yet, scowling at me and whirling the loop over his head ready to throw. A picture of THAT, now! When he had dragged me to the bank he used some rather strong language--a cowboy does hate to wet his rope--and rode off before I had a chance to thank him. This is the first time I've seen him since then.” Chip got very red. “I was young and foolish, those days, and you weren't a senator,” he repeated, apologetically. “My being a senator wouldn't have mattered at all. They've been changing your name, over this side the river, I see. How did that happen?” Again Chip was uncomfortable. “We've got a cook that is out of sight when it comes to Saratoga chips, and I'm a fiend for them, you see. The boys got to calling me Saratoga Chip, and then they cut it down to Chip and stuck to it.” “I see. There was a fellow with you over there--Davidson. What has become of him?” “Weary? He works here, too. He's down in the bunk house now, I guess.” “Well, well! Let's go and hunt him up--and we can settle about the pictures at the same time. You seem to be crippled. How did that happen? Some dare-devil performance, I expect.” The senator smiled reassuringly at the Little Doctor and got Chip out of the house and down in the bunk house with Weary, and whatever means he used to make Chip “behave himself,” they certainly were a success. For when he left, the next day, he left behind him a check of generous size, and Chip was not so aloof as he had been with the Little Doctor, and planned with her at least a dozen pictures which he meant to paint some time. There was one which he did paint at once, however--though no one saw it but Della. It was the picture of a slim young woman with gray eyes and an old felt hat on her head, standing with her fingers tangled in the mane of a chestnut horse. If there was a heartache in the work, if the brush touched the slim figure caressingly and lingered wistfully upon the face, no one knew but Chip, and Chip had learned long ago to keep his own counsel. There were some thoughts which he could not whisper into even Silver's ear. CHAPTER XVIII. -- Dr. Cecil Granthum.