"I reckon he was doing his best to head me off in a way that would save him from disclosure and prevent Lucy from knowing anything about it," he thought. "Well, I can't blame him for wanting to keep it dark, at this stage of the game. But--why didn't he come and tell me, like a man!" Suddenly he began to recall the sort of things about Delafield and his own expectations that he had been accustomed to say to Bancroft, and smiled grimly. "Lord! I think likely I've given him some pretty bad minutes! And I reckon what I said didn't invite his confidence. Good God, what a life the man must have lived all these years! It must have been plain hell since he's known I was on his track and has had to listen to the things I've said!" Compassion for the man he had hounded and, all unknowingly, had so often reviled to his face, began to soften Curtis's heart. He thought of all the years of wandering, the frequent change of name, the ups and downs of fortune, the devious and sometimes crooked ways through which he had traced Delafield, and again he exclaimed aloud: "Good God, what a life! He must all the time have been wanting to get back where he could be settled and respectable! But he didn't dare try it while he was afraid of detection and punishment. And finally he believed he'd got there, I reckon, and was preparing to be happy with his daughter--and then I came along!" Again he mused, for a long time, while the mare took her own pace. At last he lifted his head and said aloud: "I guess he's had his share of punishment after all; and I've been responsible for a lot of it. Sumner L. Delafield, we'll call it quits!" Brown Betty was standing still in the middle of the road. The sun was dropping down the west, toward masses of sparkling, fleecy white clouds that piled the horizon high. Ten miles away he could see the green groves of Socorro Springs and the white glimmer of the buildings. He drew a long breath and looked alertly about. The load he had carried so many years had slipped from his back. No longer had he any desire for revenge, and in his heart glowed compassion rather than hatred for the man he had tracked with such determination. He felt a curious exhilaration as he sat there looking about him, while the mare shifted her weight from one foot to another. "Well, Betty B.," he said, patting her neck, "you and I have had a devil of a time to-day, haven't we, old girl? But we've come through all right, thank God! And nobody is ever going to know a word about it, Betty; so don't you give it away. We're going home now, and you shall have the best supper we can find." At the ranch his first inquiry was for Homer. The young man had returned an hour before. Surprised that he was not in beaming evidence, Curtis went in search of him and found him in his own room, bending over his trunk, his belongings scattered about as if a cyclone had been swirling within the four walls.