“I’m real glad to see you safe and well, Mr. Brown!  Come right in and make yourself to home.  I guess there isn’t a happier boy living than Ben is to-night.”

“And I know there isn’t a gratefuler man living than I am for your kindness to my poor forsaken little feller,” answered Mr. Brown, dropping both his burdens to give the comely woman’s hands a hard shake.

“Now don’t say a word about it, but sit down and rest, and we’ll have tea in less ’n no time.  Ben must be tired and hungry, though he’s so happy I don’t believe he knows it,” laughed Mrs. Moss, bustling away to hide the tears in her eyes, anxious to make things sociable and easy all round.

With this end in view she set forth her best china, and covered the table with food enough for a dozen, thanking her stars that it was baking day, and everything had turned out well.  Ben and his father sat talking by the window till they were bidden to “draw up and help themselves” with such hospitable warmth that everything had an extra relish to the hungry pair.

Ben paused occasionally to stroke the rusty coat-sleeve with bread-and-buttery fingers to convince himself that “Daddy” had really come, and his father disposed of various inconvenient emotions by eating as if food was unknown in California.  Mrs. Moss beamed on every one from behind the big tea-pot like a mild full moon, while Bab and Betty kept interrupting one another in their eagerness to tell something new about Ben and how Sanch lost his tail.

“Now you let Mr. Brown talk a little; we all want to hear how he ’came alive,’ as you call it,” said Mrs. Moss, as they drew round the fire in the “settin’-room,” leaving the tea-things to take care of themselves.

It was not a long story, but a very interesting one to this circle of listeners:  all about the wild life on the plains, trading for mustangs, the terrible blow that nearly killed Ben, senior, the long months of unconsciousness in the California hospital, the slow recovery, the journey back, Mr. Smithers’s tale of the boy’s disappearance, and then the anxious trip to find out from Squire Allen where he now was.

“I asked the hospital folks to write and tell you as soon as I knew whether I was on my head or my heels, and they promised; but they didn’t; so I came off the minute I could, and worked my way back, expecting to find you at the old place.  I was afraid you’d have worn out your welcome here and gone off again, for you are as fond of traveling as your father.”

[Illustration:  Mrs. Moss welcomes Ben’s father.]

“I wanted to, sometimes, but the folks here were so dreadful good to me I couldn’t,” confessed Ben, secretly surprised to find that the prospect of going off with Daddy even cost him a pang of regret, for the boy had taken root in the friendly soil, and was no longer a wandering thistle-down, tossed about by every wind that blew.