boy driving a yoke of steers. After several
miles the road, that had hung midway of the rough hill, dipped down
sharply, and they came out into another and broader valley, where there
were tilled farms, and a little settlement, with a blacksmith shop and a
country store, post-office and inn combined. The storekeeper stood in the
door, smoking a cob pipe. Seeing Oscar, he went inside and brought out
some letters and newspapers, which he delivered in silence.

"This is Lamar post-office," announced Oscar.

"There must be some mail here for me," said Armitage.

Oscar handed him several long envelopes--they bore the name of the Bronx
Loan and Trust Company, whose office in New York was his permanent
address, and he opened and read a number of letters and cablegrams that
had been forwarded. Their contents evidently gave him satisfaction, for
he whistled cheerfully as he thrust them into his pocket.

"You keep in touch with the world, do you, Oscar? It is commendable."

"I take a Washington paper--it relieves the monotony, and I can see where
the regiments are moving, and whether my old captain is yet out of the
hospital, and what happened to my lieutenant in his court-martial about
the pay accounts. One must observe the world--yes? At the post-office
back there"--he jerked his head to indicate--"it is against the law to
sell whisky in a post-office, so that storekeeper with the red nose and
small yellow eyes keeps it in a brown jug in the back room."

"To be sure," laughed Armitage. "I hope it is a good article."

"It is vile," replied Oscar. "His brother makes it up in the hills, and
it is as strong as wood lye."

"Moonshine! I have heard of it. We must have some for rainy days."

It was a new world to John Armitage, and his heart was as light as the
morning air as he followed Oscar along the ruddy mountain road. He was in
Virginia, and somewhere on this soil, perhaps in some valley like the one
through which he rode, Shirley Claiborne had gazed upon blue distances,
with ridge rising against ridge, and dark pine-covered slopes like these
he saw for the first time. He had left his affairs in Washington in a
sorry muddle; but he faced the new day with a buoyant spirit, and did not
trouble himself to look very far ahead. He had a definite business before
him; his cablegrams were reassuring on that point. The fact that he was,
in a sense, a fugitive did not trouble him in the least. He had no
intention of allowing Jul