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Often it only signifies that its owner wears the crown in token of his magnificent qualities in the art of cattle stealing. One day Ripley Givens rode over to the Double Elm Ranch to inquire about a bunch of strayed yearlings. He was late in setting out on his return trip, and it was sundown when he struck the White Horse Crossing of the Nueces. From there to his own camp it was sixteen miles.

Yet never before on the sundown side of the Mississippi had he seen one who possessed, along with the reserve a lonely bringing-up enjoins, the dignity and poise that are counted the fruits of civilisation. "It's good blood," he said to himself, "and" with a glance at the section-boss "it's from the mother's side." Lancaster, at that moment, was truly anything but a picture of repose.

It is probably as much as two miles from the city walls, and I walked on a little way and could see other ruins still farther in the distance, but I turned back toward the hotel, and some time after sundown found myself walking along the banks of the yellow Tiber in the old city.

He was pushing forward, near sundown, to take the impulse of an eddy at the edge of Pull-an'-be-Damned when he saw that predatory, songful woman balanced knee-deep in rushing water, her arms tossing. "She's drowning herself after her quarrel with Sam Dreed," was his first thought. He had just heard a fine tale of that quarrel. The truth was not quite so bold.

The Varsimle', or leading Hind, had kept the band hovering, for the last week or two, along the timber-line, going higher each day to the baring uplands, where the snow was clearing and the deer-flies were blown away. As the pasture zone had climbed she had followed in her daily foraging, returning to the sheltered woods at sundown, for the wild things fear the cold night wind even as man does.

And the same hand which described the silent sundown on the sandy shore of the bay, and the mysterious darkness of the forests, and the blameless play of the little ones, gives us the prodigious animation of the night surprise at Dôl, the furious conflict at La Tourgue, and, perhaps most powerful of all, the breaking loose of the gun on the deck of the Claymore.

The morning had been wet and chill, but the rain-clouds swept northward as the day wore on, and at sundown the red bars belted the leaden sky that lay to the west of the towers of the gray castle on the hill. A proclamation by the King had to be read that day, and the ancient city had done all that could be done under many depressing conditions to receive the royal message with fitting honors.

At ten o'clock he had sent to Devers for some intelligent non-commissioned officer who could point out about where they had last seen Davies as he crossed the ridge returning to his men at sundown, but Devers very plausibly responded that while it might not be difficult to do so from where they parted, "just over on the west side," it couldn't be reliably done from so far to the east.

Yet the old man, who went so often at sundown, we may think, to the crest of the hill, from which he could see the long road winding over the plain to the far-off city, the road by which he had seen his son depart, light-heartedly and full of fierce joyful impulses, and along which he was to see the dejected figure, so familiar, so sadly marred, stumbling home he is the master-spirit of the sweet and comforting scene.

On Sundays, at sundown, when the winter rain had very likely dulled everybody's sense of more moderate humor, the blue law of quietness was lifted from the atmosphere; and between five and six o'clock we spread butterfly wings again, and had blind man's buff. We ran around the large centre-table, and made this gambol most tempestuously merry.