tall
and strong-appearing. He wore a dark, short beard, trimmed sharp, and
his face was almost fierce-looking, with a touch of wildness, such as
the art of the stage-man tries in vain to catch. He was not well
dressed; he carried the suggestion that he might have lived where man is
licentiously free. With his sharp eye he must have been quick to draw a
bead with a gun; but his eye, though sharp, was pleasing. A dog sniffed
him and walked off, satisfied with his investigation. The countryman
stands ready to sanction a dog's approval of a stranger--it is wisdom
fortified by superstition, by tales told around the fire at night--so a
look of mistrust was melted with a smile, and the owner of the dog spoke
to the stranger.

"Don't guess you've got a newspaper about you?" said the farmer, putting
his last can into the wagon.

"No. The afternoon papers weren't out when I left town."

"Morning paper would suit me just as well--haven't seen one to-day. I
get a weekly all winter, and I try to get a daily in the summer, but
sometimes I fail. Goin' out to anybody's house?"

"I don't know."

The farmer looked at him sharply. A man who did not know--who didn't
even guess that he didn't know--was something of a curiosity to him.
"Did you expect anybody to meet you?"

"No; I came out to look around a little--thought I might rent a farm if
I could strike the right sort of terms."

"Well, I guess you've come to the right place." He turned and pointed
far across a meadow to a windmill above tree tops on the brow of a hill.
"Mrs. Stuvic, a widow woman, that lives over yonder, has an adjoinin'
farm to rent. Get in, and I'll drive you over--goin' that way anyhow,
and it shan't cost you a cent. Throw your carpet-bag in there, it won't
fall out. Whoa, boys! They won't run away. Yes, sir, as good a little
place as there is in the county," he added, turning down a lane. "But
the old woman has had all sorts of bad luck with it. That horse would
have a fit if he couldn't clap his tail over that line every five
minutes. But he won't run away."

"I don't care if he does," said the stranger.

"Well, you would if you had to pick up milk cans for half a mile. He
scattered them from that house up yonder down to that piece of timber
day before yesterday."

"Did he run away?"

"Well, he wasn't walkin'."

"Then how do you know he won't run away again?"

"Well, I think I've sorter Christian scienced him."

The stranger laughed, and the f