Nucky nodded quickly.

“All right, then I’m telling you, every line of your face and head says you didn’t come of a breed like the woman that lived with Luigi.  I’ll bet if you show you have any decent promise, Seaton will clear that point up.  A good detective could do it.”

“I never thought of such a thing,” muttered Nucky.  He continued to stare at Frank, his pale boy’s face tense with conflicting hope and fear.  The guide picked up his blanket, but Nucky cried out: 

“Don’t go to sleep for a minute, please!  I can’t stand it alone in this moonlight.  I never thought such thoughts in my life as I have down here, about God and who I am and what a human being is.  I tell you, I’m going crazy.”

Frank nodded, and began to fill his pipe.  “Sit down close to the fire, son.  That’s what the Canyon does to anybody that’s thin skinned.  I went through it too.  I tell you, Nucky, this life here in the Canyon and the thoughts you think here, are the only real things.  New York and all that, is just the outer shell of living.  Understand me?”

The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on Frank’s with pitiful eagerness.

“It’s clean out here.  This country isn’t all messed up with men and women’s badness.  Everybody starts even and with a clean slate.  Lord knows, I was a worthless bunch when I struck here, fifteen years ago.  I’d been expelled from Yale in my senior year for gambling.  I’d run through the money my father’d left me.  I’d gotten into a woman scrape and I’d alienated every member of my family.  Just why I thought a deck of cards was worth all that, I can’t tell you.  But I did.  Then I came down here to see what the Canyon could do for my asthma and it cured that, and by the Eternal, it cured my soul, too.  Now listen to me, son!  You go back and lie down and put yourself to sleep thinking about your real mother.  Boys are apt to take their general build from their mothers, so she was probably a big woman, not pretty, but with an intellectual face full of character.  Go on, now, Enoch!  You need the rest and we’ve got a full day to-morrow.”

Nucky passed his hand unsteadily over his eyes, but rose without a word, and Frank tucked him into his blankets, then sat quietly waiting by the fire.  It was not long before deep breaths that were pathetically near to sobs told the guide that Nucky was asleep.  Then he rolled himself in his own blankets.  The moon passed the Canyon wall and utter darkness enwrapped the Canyon and the river which murmured harshly as it ran.

Nucky wakened the next morning to the smell of coffee.  He sat up and eyed Frank soberly.

“Hello, New York!  This is the Grand Canyon!” Frank grinned as he lifted the coffee pot from the fire.

Nucky grinned in response.  Shortly after, when he sat down to his breakfast the grin had disappeared, but with it had gone the look of sullenness that had seemed habitual.