There’s nothing like a sense of merit for making one feel aggrieved, and on our return to the cabin Mr. McLean pointed with disgust to some firewood.

“Look at those sorrowful toothpicks,” said he:  “Tommy’s work.”

So Lin, the excellent hearted, had angrily busied himself, and chopped a pile of real logs that would last a week.  He had also cleaned the stove, and nailed up the bed, the pillow-end of which was on the floor.  It appeared the master of the house had been sleeping in it the reverse way on account of the slant.  Thus had Lin cooked and dined alone, supped alone, and sat over some old newspapers until bed-time alone with his sense of virtue.  And now here it was long after breakfast, and no Tommy yet.

“It’s good yu’ come this forenoon,” Lin said to me.  “I’d not have had the heart to get up another dinner just for myself.  Let’s eat rich!”

Accordingly, we had richly eaten, Lin and I. He had gone out among the sheds and caught some eggs (that is how he spoke of it), we had opened a number of things in cans, and I had made my famous dish of evaporated apricots, in which I managed to fling a suspicion of caramel throughout the stew.

“Tommy’ll be hot about these,” said Lin, joyfully, as we ate the eggs.  “He don’t mind what yu’ use of his canned goods—­pickled salmon and truck.  He is hospitable all right enough till it comes to an egg.  Then he’ll tell any lie.  But shucks!  Yu’ can read Tommy right through his clothing.  ‘Make yourself at home, Lin,’ says he, yesterday.  And he showed me his fresh milk and his stuff.  ‘Here’s a new ham,’ says he; ’too bad my damned hens ain’t been layin’.  The sons-o’guns have quit on me ever since Christmas.’  And away he goes to Powder River for the mail.  ’You swore too heavy about them hens,’ thinks I. Well, I expect he may have travelled half a mile by the time I’d found four nests.”

I am fond of eggs, and eat them constantly—­and in Wyoming they were always a luxury.  But I never forget those that day, and how Lin and I enjoyed them thinking of Tommy.  Perhaps manhood was not quite established in my own soul at that time—­and perhaps that is the reason why it is the only time I have ever known which I would live over again, those years when people said, “You are old enough to know better”—­and one didn’t care!

Salmon, apricots, eggs, we dealt with them all properly, and I had some cigars.  It was now that the news came back into my head.

“What do you think of—­” I began, and stopped.

I spoke out of a long silence, the slack, luxurious silence of digestion.  I got no answer, naturally, from the torpid Lin, and then it occurred to me that he would have asked me what I thought, long before this, had he known.  So, observing how comfortable he was, I began differently.

“What is the most important event that can happen in this country?” said I.

Mr. McLean heard me where he lay along the floor of the cabin on his back, dozing by the fire; but his eyes remained closed.  He waggled one limp, open hand slightly at me, and torpor resumed her dominion over him.