and
dragged his toes through it as though he delighted in kicking up all the
dust he could. By that trick he had puzzled Helen May a little, just at
first, though he had not been able to simulate the passing of four
horses. The buggy was such as improvident farmers used to drive (before
they bought Fords) near harvest time; scaly as to paint, warped and
loose-spoked as to wheels, making more noise than progress along the
country roads.

The man held the lines so loosely that they sagged under the wire-mended
traces of sunburned leather. He leaned a little forward, as though it was
not worth while sitting straight on so hot a day. He wore an old Panama
hat that had cost him a good deal when it was new and had saved him a
good deal since in straw hats which he had not been compelled to buy so
long as this one held together. It was pulled down in front so that it
shaded his face--a face lean and lined and dark, with thin lips that
could be tender and humorous in certain moods. His eyes were hazel, like
the eyes of Starr, yet one never thought of them as being at all like
Starr's eyes. They burned always with some inner fire of life; they
laughed at life, and yet they did not seem to express mirth. They seemed
to say that life was a joke, a damnable joke on mankind; that they saw
the joke and resented it even while they laughed at it. For the rest, the
man was more than fifty years old, but his hair was thick and black as a
crow, and his eyebrows were inclined to bushiness, inclined also to slant
upward. A strong face; an unusual face, but a likeable one, it was. And
that is a fair description of Holman Sommers as Helen May first saw him.

He drove up to where she sat, and she tilted her pink silk parasol
between them as though to keep the dust from settling thick upon her
stained khaki skirt and her desert-dingy high-laced boots. She was not
interested in him, and her manner of expressing indifference could not
have misled a horned toad. She was too fresh from city life to have
fallen into the habit of speaking to strangers easily and as a matter of
country courtesy. Even when the buggy stopped beside her, she did not
show any eagerness to move the pink screen so that they might look at
each other.

"How do you do?" said he, quite as though he were greeting her in her own
home. "You are Miss Stevenson, I feel sure. I am Holman Sommers, at your
service. I am under the impression that I have with me a few articles
which