Two months had passed since the wedding of Curly and the Littlest Girl, and nothing further had happened in the way of change.  The man from Philadelphia had not come, and, to the majority of the population of Heart’s Desire at least, the railroad to the camp remained a thing as far distant as ever in the future.  Life went on, spent in the open for the most part, and in silent thoughtfulness by choice.  Blackman, J. P., now languished in desuetude among the fallen remnants of an erstwhile promising structure of the law; and there being no further occupation for the members of the bar, the latter customarily spent much of the day sitting in the sun.

“You might look several times at me,” said Dan Andersen one day, without preface or provocation, “and yet not read all my past in these fair lineaments.”

This seemed unworthy of notice.  A man’s past was a subject tabooed in Heart’s Desire.  Besides, the morning was already so warm that we were glad to seek the shade of an adobe wall.  Conversation languished.  Dan Anderson absent-mindedly rolled a cigarrillo with one hand, his gaze the while fixed on the horizon, on which we could see the faint loom of the Bonitos, toothed upon the blue sky, fifty miles away.  His mind might also have been fifty miles away, as he gazed vaguely.  There was nothing to do.  There was only the sun, and as against it the shade.  That made up life at Heart’s Desire.  It was a million miles away to any other sort of world; and that world, in so far as it had reference to a past, was a subject not mentioned among the men of Heart’s Desire.  Yet this morning there seemed to be something upon Dan Andersen’s mind, as he edged a little farther along into the shade, and felt in his pocket for a match.

“No, you wouldn’t think; just to look at me, my friend,” said he, “you wouldn’t think, without runnin’ side lines, and takin’ elevations for dips, spurs, and angles, that I had ever been anything but a barrister; now, would you?  Attorney and Counsellor-at-law, all hours of the day and night:  that bill of specifications is engraved on my brow, ain’t it?  You like enough couldn’t believe that I was ever anything else—­several things else, could you?”

His speech still failed of interest, except as it afforded additional proof of the manner in which Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and the like disappeared from the speech of all men at Heart’s Desire.  Dan Anderson sat down in the shade, his long legs stretched out in front of him.  “My boy,” said he, “you can gaze at me if you ain’t too tired.  As a matter of fact, in this pernicious age of specialization I stand out as the one glitterin’ example of success in more than one line.  Why, once I was a success as a journalist—­for a few moments.”

There was now a certain softness and innocence in his voice, which had portent, although I did not at that time suspect that he really had anything of consequence upon his soul.  Without more encouragement he went on.