ONE day in late August the stage stopped to let a woman climb the hill. Women visited the grave now and then, and Miss Cynthia Schofield, age thirty-four, a teacher in a Chicago public institution of learning, was just the one to improve such an opportunity. For Miss Schofield was progressive in the matter of acquiring knowledge. She spent each summer in some elemental region, of which she made numerous photographs and notes. These she used later in certain illustrated evening lectures called “In-gatherings,” given by Miss Schofield for the benefit of persons with fewer opportunities; also for the purpose of adding a trifle to her own modest income. She was “doing the mines” this year, and her present destination was the camp, two miles farther down. The desperado’s grave and history would make a picturesque addition to her collection.

The climb was harder than it appeared from below. Being the only passenger, the driver had told her to take her time, and more than once she leaned against a boulder to look down into the dark ravine made famous by some of Blazer’s earlier exploits. She recognized the artistic value of the fact that his last resting-place overlooked the scene of his former depredations. She must certainly bring this out well in her lecture, and as she toiled upward she was forming in her mind certain phrases, with a view to this result. Then she pushed gently between two small cedars into the opening where the grave was.

At first glance she saw only some bushes and fireweed about the blackened stumps, and the riotous mass of goldenrod which possessed one corner of the little clearing. Then just by the goldenrod she saw the grave, and paused, for, face down upon it, asleep, lay a meager barefoot boy with faded hair.

Miss Schofield was, first of all, the artist. She had anticipated nothing so rich in value as this, and with deft hands she adjusted the camera and secured the range. There came a sharp click, and the outlaw’s grave, the goldenrod, the fireweed, the black stumps, and the faded sleeping boy had been added to her store of choice in-gatherings.

There had been still another result. The snap of the shutter had brought the light figure to its feet, like some spry wood creature as suddenly disturbed. An instant more and he would have darted away into the bushes; only, Miss Schofield spoke just then, and with persuasiveness—the result of long pedagogical training.

“Don’t go! Oh, please don’t!” she pleaded, gently. “Please wait. I want so much to speak to you.”

Peanut had no particular reason for being afraid of women. The only one he had studied at close range had been kind to him to the point of indulgence. There was something in the voice of this one that held him fast. The woman came a step closer. She seemed young and beautiful to Peanut.

“Please tell me your name,” she said.

“Peanut.”

“Oh, that is what they call you, perhaps. Your real name, I mean.”

The boy made no reply at first to this comment. He seemed gathering something from the mists of memory.

“Sam told me that it used to be—longer than that,” he ventured at last, very slowly. “He told me once that it was Philip—Nutt, but he said P. was the same as Philip, and that he thought Peanut fit me better.”

Panic seemed about to return, as the result of this long speech, and once more it required the soothing diplomacy of Miss Schofield to detain him.

“How very nice,” she said. “And now won’t you please tell me where you live, and about Sam and the grave?”

Again Peanut hesitated. Then he pointed behind him.

“I live up there; and Sam, he—why he’s in the grave, and dam the man that moves his bones.”

Miss Schofield had been unprepared for this. Her emotion, however, was mistaken by Peanut for incredulity. “I can show it to you on the board,” he insisted, eagerly.

The woman came up close, now, and followed where his wisp of a finger pointed. As he indicated each line, he repeated it with a sort of monotonous tenderness, laying special emphasis on the last.

Miss Schofield’s look of concern became one of sympathetic understanding. The waif turned to her.

“You didn’t want to take Sam away, anyhow, did you?”

“Oh, no indeed! I don’t want to take any one away—” She hesitated and looked down into the wistful face before her. “At least, not Sam,” she qualified. “I have already taken a picture of the grave and you shall have one of them. Tell me, Philip, whom you live with, so I shall know how to send it.”

The sound of his name thus spoken may have awakened a sort of dignity in the waif.

“I live with the Rose of Texas,” he said, gravely. “Me an’ Sam both did, till Sam was plugged by a greaser unbeknowns, and—”

Miss Schofield interrupted rather hastily.

“Never mind the next line, Philip. I remember it. Just a moment—”

She had taken out her note-book and was puzzling over the proper entry. “Philip Nutt, alias Peanut, Care of the Rose of Texas, former housekeeper for Blazer Sam.” It seemed a doubtful combination to intrust to the mail service. Then her face lighted with a sudden resolution.

“Show me just where you live, Philip.”

The boy turned and pointed up the mountain.

“That big spruce grows by the house. It’s on the rocks behind it.”

“I see, Philip. I can find it easily. I must be going now, for the stage is waiting, but I shall stop a day or two at the mines below here. I will come to-morrow and learn just how to send the picture. Good-by till then, Philip.”

She took his thin brown hand in her own soft palm. The mother instinct welled up strong. She hungered to gather him to her breast, but he was already drawing back rather fearfully. A step away she turned to wave another good-by.

Peanut had disappeared among the bushes.