"I would be sorry, too, if you didn't," Harry laughed as he took her hand.
"I'm afraid you'll have to stay sorry," said Annabel turning red with embarrassment. "I never saw you before."
"Better late than never," Samson assured her. "You don't often see a better fellow."
The girl laughed, with a subtle look of agreement in her eyes. Then came up from the barn the ragged little lad of No Santa Claus Land—now a sturdy, bright eyed, handsome boy of eight.
The horses were put out and all went in to supper.
"I have always felt sorry for any kind of a slave?" said Samson as they sat down. "When I saw you on the sand plains you were in bondage."
"Say, I'll tell ye," said Brimstead, as he leaned toward Samson, seeming to be determined at last to make a clean breast of it. "Say, I didn't own that farm. It owned me. I got a sandy intellect. Couldn't get anything out of it but disappointment. My farm was mortgaged to the bank and I was mortgaged to the children. I couldn't even die."
Samson wrote in his diary that night:
"When Brimstead brings his sense of humor into play he acts as if he was telling a secret. When he says anything that makes me laugh, he's terribly confidential. Seems so he was kind of ashamed of it. He never laughs himself unless he does it inside. His voice always drops, too, when he talks business."
"The man that's a fool and don't know it is a good deal worse off," said Samson.