"What's the matter with findin' some chairs?" "Because I don't like to get inside walls. You know how four walls seem like so many pairs of eyes standin' around you?" "No," said Buck bluntly, "I don't know nothin' of the kind. What d'you mean?" "I dunno," answered Barry, depressed. "It jest seems that way. Ain't you noticed how sort of close it is in a house? Hard to breathe? Like you had on a shirt too small for you." "We'll stay out here, then." The other nodded, smiled, and made a gesture to the dog behind him. Black Bart crouched on the ground, and Dan Barry sat down cross-legged, his shoulders leaning against the shaggy pelt of Bart. Daniels followed the example with less grace. He was thinking very hard and fast, and he rolled a Durham cigarette to fill the interlude. "I s'pose you're bustin' to find out the news about the folks," he said dryly, at last. The other sat with his hands loosely clasped in his lap. His wide eyes looked far away, and there was about his lips that looseness, that lack of compression, which one sees so often in children. He might have sat, in that posture, for the statue of thoughtlessness. "What folks?" he asked at last Buck Daniels had lighted a match, but now he sat staring blank until the match burned down to his fingers. With an oath he tossed the remnant away and lighted another. He had drawn down several long breaths of smoke to the bottom of his lungs before he could speak again. "Some people you used to know; I suppose you've forgotten all about 'em, eh?" His eyes narrowed; there was a spark of something akin to dread in them. "Kate Cumberland?" he queried. A light came in the face of Dan Barry. "Kate Cumberland?" he repeated. "How is she, Buck? Lately, I been thinkin' about her every day." A trembling took the body and the voice of Daniels; his errand, after all, might meet some success. "Kate?" he repeated. "Oh, ay, she's well enough. But Joe Cumberland ain't." "No?" "He's dyin' Dan." And Dan replied calmly. "He's kind of old, I s'pose." "Old?" said Buck, with a sort of horror. "Yes, he's old, right enough. D'you know why he's dying? It's because you went away the way you done, Dan. That's what's killin' him." Something of thought came in the face of Barry. "Maybe I understand," he said slowly. "If I was to lose Satan, or Bart--" here the great dog whined at the mention of his name, and Barry dropped a slender hand across the scarred forehead of his servant. "If I was to lose 'em, I'd sort of mourn for 'em, maybe." Buck Daniels set his teeth. "I don't suppose it seems possible," he said, "that a man could miss another man the way you could miss your--dog, eh? But it is! Joe Cumberland is dying for you, Dan, as sure as if you'd put a bullet in his bowels." The other hesitated and then frowned and made a gesture of vague dismissal. "Don't you figure on doin' nothing about it?" asked Buck softly. "What could I do?" "My God A'mighty, ain't you got no human feelin's?"