It was late that night when Job left the camp ground, flung himself across Bess' back and started home. The stars never looked down on a happier boy. The burden, the hate, the bitterness in his heart, were all gone. A holy love, an exaltation of soul, an awakening of all that is best in a manly life, stirred him. The past was gone; "old things had passed away and all things had become new." The world was the same. Dan, with all his meanness, was in it. The saloon doors were open, the gamblers still sat at midnight at the Monte Carlo. Grizzly county had not changed, but he had. A new life was his. As he galloped down the road, far away he heard them singing: "Palms of victory, crowns of glory, I shall wear," and a strange feeling came over him. He took up the refrain, and, looking up at the stars, he seemed to see his mother's face afar off among the flashing worlds. The tears stole down his cheeks, tears of joy, as, galloping on through the night toward home, again he sang: "Palms of victory, crowns of glory, I shall wear." CHAPTER VI. THE DEANS. It was a little, long, low, unpainted shanty, with a rude doorstep, almost hid amid a jungle of vines and overarching trees at the end of a long lane, where Marshall Dean lived. A sallow-faced, thin Kentuckian, he had come up here from the plains after his sister married Andrew Malden, in the hope that being near a rich relative would save him from unnecessary labor. Andrew Malden had given him a good place at the mill, but he found it too hard on his muscles, and so decided to "ranch it." Malden had then given him the old Jones ranch and a start; but as the years drifted by he had not succeeded in raising much except a numerous family of dirty, unkempt youngsters of whom Dan was the oldest and the most promising specimen, the one who had inherited his father's pride and selfishness, with a certain natural shrewdness and sagacity that his mother's family possessed, but of which she had failed to receive much. While Malden's wife lived, they managed to silently share in the income of Pine Tree Ranch, but after she died the smuggling business between the big place and Dean's Lane suddenly stopped. Nothing ever cut deeper--they could never forgive her for dying. At last they settled down to a stolid, long wait for the old man's end. The chief theme of conversation at home was the uncertainties of life for the "old miser," and the sure probability of their move some day on to the big ranch, though not one of them knew what they would do with it if they got it. Dan felt no hesitation about telling this at school, and it was common gossip of the county.