“I am bringing you a Velasquez!” Jack added.

“Good!  Put him where he can have a view out of the window of his first teacher at work in the studio of the universe.”

The train crept on toward the hour of the Eternal Painter’s riot and toward Little Rivers, while the patch of green was softly, impalpably growing, growing, until the crisscross breaks of the streets developed and Jack could identify the Doge’s and other bungalows.  He was on the platform of the car before the brakes ground on the wheels, leaning out to see a crowd at the station, which a minute later became a prospect of familiar, kindly, beaming faces.  There was a roar of “Hello, Jack!” in the heavy voices of men and the treble of children.  Then he did not see the faces at all for a second; he saw only mist.

“Not tanned, Jack, but you’ll brown up soon!”

“Gosh!  But we’ve been lonesome without you!”

“Cure any case of sore eyes on record!”

Jack was too full of the glory of this unaffected welcome in answer to his telegram that he was coming to find words at first; but as he fairly dropped off the steps into the arms of Jim Galway and Dr. Patterson he shouted in a shaking voice: 

“Hello, everybody!  Hello, Little Rivers!”

He noted, while all were trying to grasp his hands at once, that the men had their six-shooters.  A half-dozen were struggling to get his suit case.  Not one of his friends was missing except the Doge and Mary.

“Let the patient have a little air!” protested Dr. Patterson, as some started in to shake hands a second time.

“Fellow-citizens, if there’s anything in the direct primary I feel sure of the nomination!” said Jack drily.

“You’re already elected!” shouted Bob Worther.

Around at the other side of the station Jack found Firio waiting his turn in patient isolation, with P.D., Wrath of God, and Jag Ear.

“Si! si!” called Firio triumphantly to all the sceptics who had told him that Jack would not return.

Jack took the little Indian by the shoulders and rocked him back and forth in delight, while Firio’s eyes were burning coals of jubilation.

“You knew!” Jack exclaimed.  “You were right!  I have come back!”

“Si, si!  I know!” repeated Firio.

“No stopping him from bringing the whole cavalcade to the station, either,” said Jim Galway.  “And he wouldn’t join the rest of us out in front of the station.  He was going to be his own reception committee and hold an overflow meeting all by himself!”

There was no disguising the fact that the equine trio of veterans remembered Jack.  With P.D. and Jag Ear the demonstration was unrestrained; but however exultant Wrath of God might be in secret, he was of no mind to compromise his reputation for lugubriousness by any public display of emotional weakness.

“Wrath of God, I believe you were a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier in your previous incarnation!” said Jack; “and as it is hard for a horse to be crosseyed, you could not retain the characteristic.  Think of that!  Wouldn’t a cross-eyed Cromwellian soldier strike fear to the heart of any loyalist?  And Jag Ear, you’re getting fat!”