"All done?" said he. "Well, you did a thorough job. It's the kind that will last."
"I'm right on deck when it comes to painting things red," retorted Bob. "What next?"
"Next," said Thorne, "I want you to help one of the boys split some cedar posts. We've got a corral or so to make."
Bob descended slowly from the ladder, balancing the remainder of the red stain. Thorne looked at him curiously.
"How do you like it as far as you've gone?" he permitted himself to ask. "This isn't quite up to the romantic idea of rangering, is it?"
"Well," said Bob with conviction, "I suppose it may sound foolish; but I never was surer of anything in my life than that I've struck the right job."
As he walked home that night, he looked back on the last few days with a curious bewilderment. It had all been so real; now apparently it meant nothing. Thorne was doing good work; these rangers were good men. But where had vanished all Bob's exaltation? where his feeling of the portent and influence and far-reaching significance of what these men were doing? He realized its importance; but the feeling of its fatefulness had utterly gone. Things with him were back on a work-a-day basis. He even laughed a little, good-humouredly, at himself. At the gate to the new pasture he once more stopped and looked at his horse. A deep content came over him.
"I've sure struck the right job!" he repeated aloud with conviction.
And this, could he have known it, was the outward and visible and only sign of the things spiritual that had been veiled.