They both laughed again, and then Steptoe rose.  “I must be getting along,” he said, looking curiously at the boy.  “I’ve got to catch a train at Three Boulders Station.”

“Three Boulders!” repeated the boy.  “I’m going there, too, on Friday, to meet Father Cipriano.”

“I reckon my work will be all done by Friday,” said Steptoe musingly.  Standing thus, holding his boy’s hand, he was thinking that the real fight at Marshall’s would not take place at once, for it might take a day or two for Marshall to gather forces.  But he only pressed his son’s hand gently.

“I wish you would sometimes take me with you as you used to,” said the boy curiously.  “I’m bigger now, and wouldn’t be in your way.”

Steptoe looked at the boy with a choking sense of satisfaction and pride.  But he said, “No;” and then suddenly with simulated humor, “Don’t you be taken in by any letters from me, such as you and Van Loo used to write.  You hear?”

The boy laughed.

“And,” continued Steptoe, “if anybody says I sent for you, don’t you believe them.”

“No,” said the boy, smiling.

“And don’t you even believe I’m dead till you see me so.  You understand.  By the way, Father Pedro has some money of mine kept for you.  Now hurry back to school and say you met me, but that I was in a great hurry.  I reckon I may have been rather rough to the priests.”

They had reached the lower road again, and Steptoe silently unhitched his horse.  “Good-by,” he said, as he laid his hand on the boy’s arm.

“Good-by, dad.”

He mounted his horse slowly.  “Well,” he said smilingly, looking down the road, “you ain’t got anything more to say to me, have you?”

“No, dad.”

“Nothin’ you want?”

“Nothin’, dad.”

“All right.  Good-by.”

He put spurs to his horse and cantered down the road without looking back.  The boy watched him with idle curiosity until he disappeared from sight, and then went on his way, whistling and striking off the heads of the wayside weeds with his walking-stick.

CHAPTER VII.

The sun arose so brightly over Hymettus on the morning after the meeting of the three partners that it was small wonder that Barker’s impressionable nature quickly responded to it, and, without awakening the still sleeping child, he dressed hurriedly, and was the first to greet it in the keen air of the slope behind the hotel.  To his pantheistic spirit it had always seemed as natural for him to early welcome his returning brothers of the woods and hills as to say good-morning to his fellow mortals.  And, in the joy of seeing Black Spur rising again to his level in the distance before him, he doffed his hat to it with a return of his old boyish habit, laid his arm caressingly around the great girth of the nearest pine, clapped his hands to the scampering squirrels