"Oh, no. You 've got to go back pretty far in history to be a Texas pioneer. He was just a Texan."
She gave another perusal to certain parts and offered it back.
"There is another piece on the other side," he said.
She turned it over and found a shorter clipping carefully pasted to the back. This also she read.
AN ARTISTIC MONUMENT
Mr. Stephen Brown yesterday received from Austin the monument which he had made for the grave of his mother, Mrs. Stephen P. Brown, who died last November. It is a most beautiful work of art and was much admired by those who saw it. It is a massive block of imported gray granite skillfully carved with clusters of grapes in high relief. Mr. Brown ordered it from the leading marble-cutters in Austin. The reverse side of the stone was cut after his own design, and consists simply of a Lone Star. On the base is the word Mother. Many of our citizens were enabled to inspect it as it went up Main Street, Mr. Jonas Hicks stopping his three yoke of oxen to accommodate those who wished to look it over. It will be by far the most beautiful work of art in our local cemetery.
Janet folded up the clipping carefully, according to the creases in it, and passed it back. When he had returned it to its compartment in the wallet,—an operation which was somewhat delayed by his difficulties with the tissue paper around the picture,—she questioned him further about the Comanche Indians and his father's adventures in the war with Mexico. Now the conversational situation was turned about, Janet becoming the interlocutor; and as she had the advantage of so copious a source of information, there was no end to her questioning. And as the stream of talk broadened, it began to include his own experiences and adventures, most interesting of which, to Janet, was a short account of the fight of a sheriff's posse with the train-robbers intrenched near the Post Oaks, a most determined encounter in which the sheriff was among those killed while Steve Brown received only a blunted thumb, for the clumsy appearance of which his story was rather an apology.
"That's all I got," he said. "And it works as good as ever."
To demonstrate which fact, he held it up and made it work.
Now that she had material by which to lead the conversation, she found him not nearly so taciturn as she had at first thought him. Indeed, he talked on without remembering to fix the fire. And when it had nearly faded out he continued on, unconscious of the fact that the real Janet was no longer in sight except as she was partially lit by the moon which now hove upon the scene.