"Oh, pshaw," said Lafe, settling to the ride. "What's the use?" CHAPTER XXXI GREAT EXPECTATIONS IN JOHNSON FAMILY "Say, Dan." "Huh-huh?" "Did you ever feel kind of sudden like you'd done something before?" Lafe inquired. It was a month later and we were riding through the dusk up the Canon towards his home. This was too abstruse. "I mean," he explained, "sometimes when you're at some place or looking at something, haven't you had a quick idea that you'd done the same thing in the same place a long time ago? Haven't you ever felt that way, Dan?" "Often." "I wonder," said he, "what's the reason?" "It's probably a recurring impression--a remembrance of an act performed years ago." He shook his head. "No-oo. It ain't that. I ain't never rode up here with you before. This is the first time me and you have been here together, ain't it? Yet I swear it struck me just now that, so long ago I can't call to mind when, me and you were trotting along just like this." "Perhaps we were chums in a previous existence. There is the transmigration of souls, you know." Lafe answered impatiently that the phenomenon could not be explained on any such grounds and expressed surprise that a man of my seeming sense would credit such theories. It seemed to rankle in him strangely. He grumbled to himself for a considerable distance, and was so visibly put out that I switched the talk. "How's Bob getting along?" I ventured. It proved an unfortunate choice of topics. Ferrier had been given a year in the cells by the commandant of the post, and then Horne had gone to his succor. And although the major had vowed to high heaven that no deserter would ever be dealt with leniently by him, he had yielded finally to the point of cutting down his punishment. It is true that there were many extenuating circumstances, and Ferrier seemed so sincere in his desire to atone that his commander was favorably inclined. So it ended by Hetty's brother escaping with thirty days' confinement. Then, anxious to get him away from old associations, and comrades who knew the mistakes of his past, Johnson arranged through Horne to pay for his discharge. All this had he done. Indeed, Lafe had labored unceasingly for his brother-in-law. Yet he railed against him, even while he aided. Like many men who never shirk from helping when it is most needed, Johnson could never hear the object of his benefactions mentioned without falling a victim to spleen. I should have avoided all reference to Ferrier. "There's a brother-in-law for you," he snorted. "Yes, sir, he's sure a treasure. I no sooner get him out of the cells for deserting, than off he goes and--guess what he wants to do now?" "Borrow some money?" "You've hit it. Yes, sir, you've nailed it dead to rights. Here, after all the trouble me and ol' Horne took with that general at the Fort, that there feller Ferrier asks me to stake him, just as cool as you'd ask for a match. Say, have you got one? I'm plumb out."