“Not at all,” said Paul coldly. “I hate a weapon. I am always ashamed of myself when I get one in my hand.” “You act that way, dear!” “God made tools and the Devil made weapons.” “You are civil to my father's profession.” “Your father is what he is aside from his profession.” “You are quite mistaken, Paul. My father and his profession are one. His sword is a symbol of healing. The army is the great surgeon of the nation when the time comes for a capital operation.” “It grows harder to tell my story,” said Paul gloomily;--“the short and simple annals of the poor.” “Now come! Have I been a snob about my father's profession?” “No; but you love it, naturally. You have grown up with its pomp and circumstance around you. You are the history makers when history is most exciting.” “Go on with your story, you proud little Dutchman! When I despise you for your farming relatives, you can taunt me with my history making.” Paul was about two years old when his parents broke up in the Wood River country and came south by wagon on the old stage-road to Felton. Whenever he saw a “string-bean freighter's” outfit moving into Bisuka, if there was a woman on the driver's seat, he wanted to take off his hat to her. For so his mother sat beside his father and held him in her arms two hundred miles across the Snake River desert. The stages have been laid off since the Oregon Short Line went through, but there were stations then all along the road. One night they made camp at a lonely place between Soul's Rest and Mountain Home. Oneman Station it was called; afterwards Deadman Station, when the keeper's body was found one morning stiff and cold in his bunk. He died in the night alone. Emily Bogardus had cause to hate the man when he was living, and his dreary end was long a shuddering remembrance to her, like the answer to an unforgiving prayer. The station was in a hollow with bare hills around, rising to the highest point of that rolling plain country. The mountains sink below the plain, only their white tops showing. It was October. All the wild grass had been eaten close for miles on both sides of the road, but over a gap in the Western divide was the Bruneau Valley, where the bell-mare of the team had been raised. In the night she broke her hopples and struck out across the summit with the four mules at her heels. Towards morning a light snow fell and covered their tracks. Adam was compelled to hunt his stock on foot; the keeper refusing him a horse, saying he had got himself into trouble before through being friendly with the company's horses. He started out across the hills, expecting that the same night would see him back, and his wife was left in the wagon camp alone. * * * * *