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Of course the news of his return spread swiftly, for he was a personage, but before the curious could mark him he had left for the creek that bore his name, where a hundred men were preparing to drift out Discovery pay-streak under his supervision. He remained there a month, during which the first gray snows turned white and brought that peculiar loneliness, that depression of spirit which marks the beginning of winter.

Then one day he decided to go to town. The impulse surprised him, for he had meant to shun the place, as always, but his summer in the world outside had worked a change and something within him hungered for companionship, the glare of lights, the sight of animated faces. Then, too, he was curious to examine this town of his at closer range.

It was worth seeing, he decided proudly, during his inspection; it was a splendid, healthy camp. He walked the front street, then prowled through the regions behind. There were women in this part of Arcadia, and these he regarded distrustfully, although he was more than once arrested by a glimpse of some cozy home, and stood staring until warned by the frowns of indignant housewives that his presence was suspicious. He remembered another cabin like these–his own. He had never quite grown accustomed to its white curtains and china dishes and similar delights, any more than he had grown accustomed to the presence of that wonderful, mysterious creature who had filled the place with light. It was all part of another life, a bewildering dream too agreeable to last.

In the course of his wanderings, however, he came into a different district, one which offended him sorely. Immediately behind the saloons he found a considerable cluster of meaner shacks which were inhabited by women and yet which were not homes. These gaudily curtained houses huddled close together, as if for moral support or as if avoiding contact with their surroundings; they crouched in the shelter of the gilded dance-halls, seeking a sort of protection in one another’s disreputable company. From some of the windows haggard faces smiled at Daniels, and he heard sounds of a merrymaking that were particularly offensive at this hour. Until this moment he had regarded Arcadia with fatherly pride, and had not dreamed it was wicked, hence this discovery enraged him. He was not a sensitive man, having trod the frontier where vice is naked, but something about the rotten core of this new community sickened him. It reminded him of a child diseased.

And then, as if to point the comparison, he saw a child, a tiny, fat, round-faced person leading a puppy by a string.

Now, women were strange to John Daniels, since there had been but one in his life, and he had possessed her only briefly, but children were mysterious, incomprehensible creatures; phenomena which excited at once his awe and his amazement. They made him ill at ease; he had never touched one, with the possible exception of an Indian papoose, now and then, therefore his present meeting constituted an experience–almost an adventure. It was a white child, too, and it gazed at him with the disconcerting calmness of a full-grown person. Daniels was both embarrassed and shocked at its presence in this locality. He hesitated, then summoned his courage and said, timidly:

“Say, kid, ain’t you lost?”

The child continued to stare at him in unaffected wonder, leaving him painfully conscious of his absurd size and forbidding appearance. He feared that once it had overcome its first amazement it would begin to cry and thus cover him with ignominy. But, happily for him, the puppy experienced none of its owner’s doubts and uncertainties; it flattened its round stomach, thumped its soft paws upon the sidewalk, then approached the giant in a delirious series of wobbly leaps, wiggling an eloquent, if awkward, declaration of friendship.

“Fine dog-team you’re driving, sonny!” Daniels smiled, congratulating himself upon an admirable display of wit, only to realize with a start that he had made a mistake. Some sixth sense informed him that this was not a boy. It was a humiliating error.