yellow lights of the village his
thoughts came back to Flaxen and to the letter which he expected to
receive from her. He quickened his steps, though his feet were sore and
his limbs stiff and lame.

The one little street presented its usual Saturday-night appearance.
Teams were hitched to the narrow plank walk before the battlemented
wooden stores. Men stood here and there in listless knots, smoking,
talking of the weather and of seeding, while their wives, surrounded by
shy children, traded within. Being Saturday night, the saloons were
full of men, and shouts and the clink of beer mugs could be heard at
intervals. But the larger crowd was gathered at the post-office:
uncouth farmers of all nationalities, clerks, land-sharks, lawyers, and
giggling girls in couples, who took delight in mingling with the crowd.

Judge Sid Balser was over from Boomtown, and was talking expansively to
a crowd of "leading citizens" about a scheme to establish a horse-car
line between Boomtown and Belleplain.

Colonel Arran, of the Belleplain _Argus_, in another corner, not ten
feet away, was saying that the judge was "a scoundrel, a blow-hard, and
would down his best lover for a pewter cent," to all of which the
placid judge was accustomed and gave no heed.

Bert paid no attention to the colonel or to the judge, or to any of
this buzzing. "They are just talking to hear themselves make a noise,
anyway. They talk about building up the country--they who are a rope
and a grindstone around the necks of the rest of us, who do the work."

When Gearheart reached his box he found a large, square letter in it,
and looking at it saw that it was from Flaxen directed to Anson. "Her
picture, probably," he said as he held it up. As he was pushing rapidly
out he heard a half-drunken fellow say, in what he thought was an
inaudible tone:

"There's Gearheart. Wonder what's become of his little Norsk."

Gearheart turned, and pushing through the crowd, thrust his eyes into
the face of the speaker with a glare that paralysed the poor fool.

"What's become o' your sense?" he snarled, and his voice had in it a
carnivorous note.

With this warning he turned contemptuously and passed out, leaving the
discomfited rowdy to settle accounts with his friends. But there was a
low note in the ruffian's voice, an insinuating inflection, which
stayed with him all along the way home, like a bad taste in the mouth.
He saw by the aid of a number of these side-lights