ranch.  An’ hadn’t been gone a week ‘fore one night, I got home from sellin’ my papers, ‘n’ the rooms wus locked up ‘n’ empty, ‘n’ the woman o’ the house, she told me Minna ‘d gone—­shown a clean pair o’ heels.  Some un else said she’d gone across the water to be nuss to a lady as had a little baby, too.  Never heard a word of her since—­nuther has Ben.  If I’d ha’ bin him, I wouldn’t ha’ fretted a bit—­’n’ I guess he didn’t.  But he thought a heap o’ her at the start.  Tell you, he was spoons on her.  She was a daisy-lookin’ gal, too, when she was dressed up ‘n’ not mad.  She’d big black eyes ‘n’ black hair down to her knees; she’d make it into a rope as big as your arm, and twist it ’round ‘n’ ’round her head; ‘n’ I tell you her eyes ’d snap!  Folks used to say she was part Itali-un—­said her mother or father ’d come from there, ‘n’ it made her queer.  I tell ye, she was one of ’em—­she was!”

He often told Mr. Hobbs stories of her and of his brother Ben, who, since his going out West, had written once or twice to Dick.

Ben’s luck had not been good, and he had wandered from place to place; but at last he had settled on a ranch in California, where he was at work at the time when Dick became acquainted with Mr Hobbs.

“That gal,” said Dick one day, “she took all the grit out o’ him.  I couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for him sometimes.”

They were sitting in the store door-way together, and Mr. Hobbs was filling his pipe.

“He oughtn’t to ’ve married,” he said solemnly, as he rose to get a match.  “Women—­I never could see any use in ’em myself.”

As he took the match from its box, he stopped and looked down on the counter.

“Why!” he said, “if here isn’t a letter!  I didn’t see it before.  The postman must have laid it down when I wasn’t noticin’, or the newspaper slipped over it.”

He picked it up and looked at it carefully.

“It’s from him!” he exclaimed.  “That’s the very one it’s from!”

He forgot his pipe altogether.  He went back to his chair quite excited and took his pocket-knife and opened the envelope.

“I wonder what news there is this time,” he said.

And then he unfolded the letter and read as follows: 

“Dorincourt castle” My dear Mr. Hobbs

“I write this in a great hury becaus i have something curous to tell you i know you will be very mutch suprised my dear frend when i tel you.  It is all a mistake and i am not a lord and i shall not have to be an earl there is a lady whitch was marid to my uncle bevis who is dead and she has a little boy and he is lord fauntleroy becaus that is the way it is in England the earls eldest sons little boy is the earl if every body else is dead i mean if his farther and grandfarther are dead my grandfarther is not dead but my uncle bevis is and so his boy is lord Fauntleroy and i am not becaus my papa was the youngest son and my name is Cedric Errol like it was