When he told her how they had buried little Jack, and of the father's admission that his determination to lead the life of an outlaw had come when he found that she had been untrue to him, she was shaken with grief. She could only sit and weep. Not even at the gate, when the old man left her, did she say anything. Within, she stopped before a picture which hung over the mantle-piece and looked at it, through eyes that filled again and again with tears. It was the picture of a pretty mountain girl with dark eyes and sensual lip. Margaret knelt before it and wept. The boy had come and stood moodily at the front gate. The hot and resentful blood still tinged in his cheek. He looked at his knuckles--they were cut and swollen where he had struck the boy who had jeered him. It hurt him, but he only smiled grimly. Never before had any one called him a wood's-colt. He had never heard the word before, but he knew what it meant. For the first time in his life, he hated his mother. He heard her weeping in the little room they called home. He merely shut his lips tightly and, in spite of the stoicism that was his by nature, the tears swelled up in his eyes. They were hot tears and he could not shake them off. For the first time the wonder and the mystery of it all came over him. For the first time he felt that he was not as other boys,--that there was a meaning in this lonely cabin and the shunned woman he called mother, and the glances, some of pity, some of contempt, which he had met all of his life. As he stood thinking this, Richard Travis rode slowly down the main road leading from the town to The Gaffs. And this went through the boy successively--not in words, scarcely--but in feelings: "What a beautiful horse he is riding--it thrills me to see it--I love it naturally--oh, but to own one! "What a handsome man he is--and how like a gentleman he looks! I like the way he sits his horse. I like that way he has of not noticing people. He has got the same way about him I have got--that I've always had--that I love--a way that shows me I'm not afraid, and that I have got nerve and bravery. "He sits that horse just as I would sit him--his head--his face--the way that foot slopes to the stirrup--why that's me--" He stopped--he turned pale--he trembled with pride and rage. Then he turned and walked into the room where Margaret Adams sat. She held out her arms to him pleadingly. But he did not notice her, and never before had she seen such a look on his face as he said calmly: "Mother, if you will come to the door I will show you my father." Margaret Adams had already seen. She turned white with a hidden shame as she said: "Jimmie--Jimmie--who--who--?" "No one," he shouted fiercely--"by God"--she had never before heard him swear--"I tell you no one--on my honor as a Travis--no one! It has come to me of itself--I know it--I feel it." He was too excited to talk. He walked up and down the little room, his proud head lifted and his eyes ablaze.