“I don't know,” said the boy quietly. “I think he said something, but I've forgotten it. But it was mighty good of him to come, for I thought, you know, that he did not care to see me after Heavy Tree, and that he'd gone back on us.” “What did he tell you?” continued Steptoe. “Did he talk of me or of your mother?” “No,” said the boy, but without any show of interest or sympathy; “we talked mostly about old times.” “Tell ME about those old times, Eddy. You never told me anything about them.” The boy, momentarily arrested more by something in the tone of his father's voice--a weakness he had never noticed before--than by any suggestion of his words, said with a laugh, “Oh, only about what we used to do when I was very little and used to call myself his 'little brother,'--don't you remember, long before the big strike on Heavy Tree? They were gay times we had then.” “And how he used to teach you to imitate other people's handwriting?” said Steptoe. “What made you think of that, pop?” said the boy, with a slight wonder in his eyes. “Why, that's the very thing we DID talk about.” “But you didn't do it again; you ain't done it since,” said Steptoe quickly. “Lord! no,” said the boy contemptuously. “There ain't no chance now, and there wouldn't be any fun in it. It isn't like the old times when him and me were all alone, and we used to write letters as coming from other people to all the boys round Heavy Tree and the Bar, and sometimes as far as Boomville, to get them to do things, and they'd think the letters were real, and they'd do 'em. And there'd be the biggest kind of a row, and nobody ever knew who did it.”