Then, with the bone so nearly knit that the patient might leave the ward on crutches to sit each morning in Barker’s room as a privilege, the disobedient child of twenty-one had slipped out of the hospital and hobbled hastily to the hog ranch, where whiskey and variety waited for a languishing convalescent.  Here he grew gay, and was soon carried back with the leg refractured.  Yet Barker’s surgical rage was disarmed, the patient was so forlorn over his doctor’s professional chagrin.

“I suppose it ain’t no better this morning, Doc?” he had said, humbly, after a new week of bed and weights.

“Your right leg’s going to be shorter.  That’s all.”

“Oh, gosh!  I’ve been and spoiled your comminuted fee-mur!  Ain’t I a son-of-a-gun?”

You could not chide such a boy as this; and in time’s due course he had walked jauntily out into the world with legs of equal length after all and in his stride the slightest halt possible.  And Doctor Barker had missed the child’s conversation.  To-day his mustache was a perfected thing, and he in the late end of his twenties.

“He’ll wake up about noon to-morrow in a dive, without a cent,” said Barker.  “Then he’ll come back on a freight and begin over again.”

At the Denver station Lin McLean passed through the shoutings and omnibuses, and came to the beginning of Seventeenth Street, where is the first saloon.  A customer was ordering Hot Scotch; and because he liked the smell and had not thought of the mixture for a number of years, Lin took Hot Scotch.  Coming out upon the pavement, he looked across and saw a saloon opposite with brighter globes and windows more prosperous.  That should have been his choice; lemon peel would undoubtedly be fresher over there; and over he went at once, to begin the whole thing properly.  In such frozen weather no drink could be more timely, and he sat, to enjoy without haste its mellow fitness.  Once again on the pavement, he looked along the street toward up-town beneath the crisp, cold electric lights, and three little bootblacks gathered where he stood and cried “Shine?  Shine?” at him.  Remembering that you took the third turn to the right to get the best dinner in Denver, Lin hit on the skilful plan of stopping at all Hot Scotches between; but the next occurred within a few yards, and it was across the street.  This one being attained and appreciated, he found that he must cross back again or skip number four.  At this rate he would not be dining in time to see much of the theatre, and he stopped to consider.  It was a German place he had just quitted, and a huge light poured out on him from its window, which the proprietor’s father-land sentiment had made into a show.  Lights shone among a well-set pine forest, where beery, jovial gnomes sat on roots and reached upward to Santa Claus; he, grinning, fat, and Teutonic, held in his right hand forever a foaming glass, and forever in his left a string of sausages that dangled down among the gnomes.  With his American