After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire.  The men, who had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively miscellany of information or invention.  There was jest, laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs.  As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm’s-length, which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common variety of billet-doux.  The man was plainly disappointed that Peter would not notice or comment.  Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and remarked to Peter, “It’s from her.”

“Indeed,” said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who “her” could be.  “Let me congratulate you.”

“Yes, sir,” and there was conviction in the cow-puncher’s tone; “it’s from old man Kinson’s girl, up to the Basin, and the parson’s goin’ to give us the life sentence soon.  A man gets sick o’ helling it all over creation.”  He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled him to speak with a certain authority.  “Is it that, or is it that we’re getting on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?”

“I think we’re just sick of helling it.”  Peter looked towards the star that last night had been the beacon towards which he and Judith had scaled the heights.  “Yes, we get sick of helling it after we’ve turned thirty.”

“Then I can’t be making a mistake.  If I thought it was because I was getting on, I’d stampede this here range.  It don’t seem fair to a girl to allow that you’re broke, tamed, and know the way to the corral, when it’s just that you’re needin’ to go to an old man’s home.”

“Now this is really love,” said Peter to himself, with interest.  “This is humility.”  A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and generous into Peter’s heart, and he continued to himself:  “Now that’s what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!” Poor Judith!  Poor burden-bearer!  Who was to love her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man Kinson’s girl, of the Basin, was loved?  Yet suppose some one did love her in such fashion and she returned it?  It was a picture Peter had never conjured up before.  Nonsense! he was accustomed to think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the way to think of her.  “Dear Judith!” said Peter, half unconsciously to himself, and looked again at the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and continued to reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped to extract some further meaning from the now familiar words.  Nature had fitted him out with a rag-bag assortment of features—­the nose of a clown, the eyes of a ferret, the mouth that hangs agape like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the incessant talker.  And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily turning his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected of the glow that many waters cannot quench.