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 in his path, and whistled to the dipping jays.
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