"Did you ever see a flock of buzzards circling, Flash, waiting for some wounded thing beneath them to die? No? Well, I have, and it isn't a pretty sight either. That was what they made me think of that night. And I learned, too, how they'd been waiting ever since for that boy to go the way his father had traveled before him; they even told me that the same old jug still stood in the kitchen corner, and would have pointed out his tumble-down old place on the hill, where they had let him go on living alone, only it was too dark for any one to see. "Odd, now wasn't it? But it didn't come to me at that moment. I never gave it a thought that there was a man who had licked Conway once and might do it again. But I didn't forget him; I wanted to, that night, but I couldn't. And I guess I was still thinking about him when some one touched my arm the next morning, while I was waiting for the train, and I turned around and found him standing there beside me. "Flash, have you noticed how grave he is--kind of sober-quiet? Have you? That comes from living too much alone. And he's only a kid, after all--that's all, just a kid. He startled me for a moment, but the minute I looked at him that morning I knew he had something on his mind, and after I'd tried to make it a little easier for him I gave him a chance to talk. "He had a big raw welt across one cheek--a wicked thing to look at! You've noticed it, I see. Well, he stood there fingering it a little, trying to think of a way to begin gracefully. Then he got out the paper with the account of Jed The Red's last go in it and jumped right into the middle of all that was bothering him. He hunted out the statement of Conway's share of the purse and asked me if it was true. I told him it was--that I'd written it myself. And then he asked me, point blank, how _he_ could get a chance at Conway. He--he said Conway had never been able to whip him, Flash--said he didn't believe he ever could! "Now, I'm sentimental--I know that. But I manage to keep my feet on the ground now and then just the same. And so I want to say right here that it wasn't his words that counted with me. Why, I'd have laughed in his face only for the way he said them! As it was, I said too much. But I thought of you then--I couldn't help it, could I? It hit me smash between the eyes! His face had been reminding me of something--something I couldn't place until that minute. Flash, do you know what he made me think of? Do you? Well, he looked like a halftone print of the Pilgrim Fathers--the kind that they hang on the walls in the district schools. And it got me--got me!--maybe you know why. I don't. But I wrote it on this card, under your address, and gave it to him.