Show the old settler uy jy dear san Jua ners I 1 I 1 went to another part of the country and was gone four years 1 but I 1 kept track of jim always he was still there as one of the important poi tant people in my world of i thu thought thong ht and I 1 not only heard 1 abut about him but I 1 envisaged the interesting te tc f features agures af f the wondrous show he was attending as if I 1 were seeing them with my own eyes of all the over salted ex experiences pa sei seivel ved up to jim whitby in his interesting interns inte ting show there was nothing else that ate into him like the sli ange actions of his children as they came ons one by one to fools hill hia when the last of them had finally passed it some of them climbing up over it and others staggering down jims wife had become an invalid and the big d doctor docter c bills ate up his lifes accumulations like a blaze in dry grass when after a lon long 0 g aid and bitter experience his wife died he had one girl still depending on him for a livelihood but he had parted w with th every cow every saddle horse and even the home in which they had lived to meet this avalanche of obligations I 1 dreaded to meet him again I 1 considered how his wife had been his comfort and his refuge in all the stormy scenes ahr through ugh which he had gone and now she was gone everything but that one little gil girl gili I gone from him I 1 feared that the wondrous jim whitby that I 1 had known and loved the whitby who had given me generous courage co urage when I 1 thought he was doing well to provide for himself would be crushed or soured with the tragic scenes in his big shw he was not the hard knocks of the last four years like the hottest flame of a purifying furnace had made him even more than he was before he was riding now on another mans horses chasing anol another lher mans cows and receiving rec receiving eivin 9 but a pittance of a salary for he was but a shadow of the man he used to be it was an ugly situation but whitby was liv living in g it out to the end making ou out t of it something I 1 1 beautiful jim whitby I 1 said and re gardess of custom or what he would think about it I 1 put my arm around his bony shoulders I 1 and pulled him over to me you are doing a heap more than punch 1 ing cows youre earning a heap more than 40 a month thanks he answered with lips that twitched ive always believed in life theres a charm in it even when its heavily salted I 1 saw him again that fall at maple mapie creek his hair was grizzled and he was just a shadow f a man lost in big overalls under a i j continued on fage age eight the old settler I 1 conti aerl nag 1 11 1 1 wide hat and he rode by me with out speaking or looking up I 1 I 1 hey jim I 1 called ye aint gone back on me have ye ile he reined down to sto stop p and turned sorry he said you know ill never go back on you but I 1 was chinkin th inkin about something tell you abut about it one of these days i he rode on I 1 knew he had no time to stop but I 1 looked after him and kept looking even after he had vanished among the maple trees on the hillside I 1 I 1 two weeks later when that startling report came to me and I 1 knew r would not see jim whitby again somehow I 1 had bad a feeling that I 1 had known it before it came cama I 1 and that jim had told tod me sure he knew it a all 11 the time he had t tj know it that was the big sustain I 1 ing factor behind his chivalry ALBERT R LYMAN |