abstraction, she had forgotten about his encumberment.

Before she could speak there was a sonorous hail from the house; a hail
in keeping with the generous bulk of its owner, who had come through the
door. He was well past middle-age, with a thatch of gray hair half
covering his high forehead. In one hand he held the book that he had been
reading, and in the other a pair of big tortoise-shell glasses.

"Mary, you are late--and what have we here?"

He was beaming at Jack as he came across the bridge and he broke into
hearty laughter as he viewed Jack's preoccupation with the
second-class matter.

"At last! At last we have rural free delivery in Little Rivers! We are
the coming town! And your uniform, sir"--Jasper Ewold took in the cowboy
outfit with a sweeping glance which warmed with the picturesque
effect--"it's a great improvement on the regulation; fit for free
delivery in Little Rivers, where nobody studies to be unconventional in
any vanity of mistaking that for originality, but nobody need be
conventional."

He took some of the cargo in his own hands. With the hearty breeze of his
personality he fairly blew Jack onto the porch, where magazines and
pamphlets were dropped indiscriminately in a pile on a rattan settee.

"You certainly have enough reading matter," said Jack. "And I must be
getting on to camp."

For he had no invitation to stay from Mary and the conventional fact
that he had to recognize is that a postman's call is not a social call.
As he turned to go he faced her coming across the bridge. An Indian
servant, who seemed to have materialized out of the night, had taken
charge of her pony.

"To camp! Never!" said Jasper Ewold. "Sir Knight, slip your lance in the
ring of the castle walls--but having no lance and this being no castle,
well, Sir Knight in _chaparejos_--that is to say, Sir Chaps--let me
inform you"--here Jasper Ewold threw back his shoulders and tossed his
mane of hair, his voice sinking to a serious basso profundo--"yes, inform
you, sir, that there is one convention, a local rule, that no stranger
crosses this threshold at dinner-time without staying to dinner." There
was a resonance in his tone, a liveliness to his expression, that was
infectious.

"But Firio and Jag Ear and Wrath of God wait for me," Jack said, entering
with real enjoyment into the grandiose style.

"High sounding company, sir! Let me see them!" demanded Jasper Ewold.

Jack pointed to his cavalcade waiting i