A week later Derrick was tramping along a dusty road which led to the little town of San Leonardo, where, he had been told, he could find a night's lodging.

He was tired and footsore; in addition to the English five-pound note, he possessed but very little of the money with which he had left the circus; though, during his tramp, he had been able to get an occasional job, helping some herdsman rounding up his cattle or assisting timbermen to adjust their loads, and he was hoping that he would find some permanent employment in one of the big towns.

He had the road to himself, and was feeling rather down on his luck, as a friendless man in a strange land must do; and, worse than all, he was, at that moment, terribly home-sick.

Not for the first time, he had realized how much he had given up when he decided to sacrifice himself for Miriam Ainsley--no, Miriam Heyton, as she was now--the Miriam who, strangely enough, troubled his thoughts but little.

Indeed, when he did think of her, with the remembrance was mixed a kind of amazement that he had ever loved her; for the illusion had now left him, and he knew that she had not been worth, at any time, all that she had cost him.
"What a fool I have been!" was the thought, the bitterness of which so many men have felt.