I remained overnight at the ranch.  After supper, sitting in his chair before a cheerful fire, Uncle Lance dozed off to sleep, leaving his sister and myself to entertain each other.  I had little to say of my past, and the future was not encouraging, except there was always work to do.  But Miss Jean unfolded like the pages of an absorbing chronicle, and gave me the history of my old acquaintances in the valley.  Only a few of the girls had married.  Frances Vaux, after flirting away her youth, had taken the veil in one of the orders in her church.  My old sweetheart was contentedly living a life of seclusion on the ranch on which she was born, apparently happy, but still interested in any word of me in my wanderings.  The young men of my acquaintance, except where married, were scattered wide, the whereabouts of nearly all of them unknown.  Tony Hunter had held the McLeod estate together, and it had prospered exceedingly under his management.  My old friend, Red Earnest, who outrode me in the relay race at the tournament in June, ’77, was married and serving in the Customs Service on the Rio Grande as a mounted river guard.

The next morning, I made the round of the Mexican quarters, greeting my old friends, before taking my leave and starting for the railroad.  The cottage which had been built for Esther and me stood vacant and windowless, being used only for a storehouse for zacahuiste.  As I rode away, the sight oppressed me; it brought back the June time of my youth, even the hour and instant in which our paths separated.  On reaching the last swell of ground, several miles from the ranch, which would give me a glimpse of headquarters, I halted my horse in a farewell view.  The sleepy old ranch cosily nestled among the encinal oaks revived a hundred memories, some sad, some happy, many of which have returned in retrospect during lonely hours since.