It is supposed to be told by an outdoor man in those delightful moments of relaxation when the restraint of self-consciousness is dropped, and the spirit flows forth with a freedom difficult to find, outside the egoism of childhood. This general suggestion is easily tossed out; but the reader must supply the details—the night camps with the pipes sending up incense about the tiny fires, the winter evenings when the still cold lurks at the threshold or the blizzard howls around the log corners; or those still more elusive moments when the riding man shifts his weight to a single thigh, and tells the inner story which has been rising from his open heart to his closed lips for many a long mile. Nor will these details suffice to complete the atmosphere in which, bit by bit, the story is told. The greatest charm in the told story comes direct from the teller; and, toil as we will over printed pages, they obstinately refuse to reproduce the twinkle of bright, deep-set eyes, the whimsical twist which gives character to a commonplace word, the subtile modulations of a mellow voice, the discriminating accent which makes a sentence fire when spoken, and only ashes when written; or, hardest of all, those eloquent pauses and illuminating gestures which convey a climax neither tongue nor pen dare attempt. Happy Hawkins is complex, but the basic foundation of his character is simplicity. His audience is usually a mixed one, men of the range and an Easterner or two, fortunate enough to find the way into his confidence. Occasionally he amuses himself by talking to the one group over the heads of the other; but even then, his own simplicity is but thinly veiled. The phases of life which he holds lightly are exploited with riotous recklessness; but whoever would visit his private shrines must tread with reverent step. His exaggerations are not to deceive, but to magnify—an adjunct to expression invariably found among primitive people. A brass monkey is really not sensitive to variations of temperature; and yet, even among the civilized, a peculiarly vivid impression is conveyed by stating that a particular cold snap has had a disintegrating effect upon the integrity of a brass monkey. There is a philosophy of exaggeration which is no kin to falsehood.