horse that at first glance appeared to earn all it got.

The train left the platform--and left quite as uninviting a perspective
on the other side of the track as had previously greeted Madison's
restricted view. But now the man who had salvaged his baggage came down
the platform toward him. Madison inspected the approaching figure with
interest. The man ambled along without haste, his jaws wagging
industriously upon his tobacco, his iron-gray chin whiskers, from the
wagging, flapping like a burgee in a breeze. He wore a round fur cap,
quite bare of fur at the edges where the pelt showed shiny, and a red
woollen tippet was tied round his neck and knotted at the back with the
ends dangling down over his coat. The coat itself, a long one of some
fuzzy material, with huge side pockets into which the man's hands were
plunged, reached to the cavernous tops of jackboots where the nether
ends of his trousers were stowed away.

The man halted before Madison, and, reaching a mittened hand under his
chin, reflectively lifted his whiskers to an acute angle, while his blue
eyes over the rims of steel-bowed spectacles wandered from Madison to
Madison's dress-suit case and back to Madison again.

"Be you goin' to git off here?" he inquired.

Madison smiled at him engagingly.

"Well," he said, "I wouldn't care to have it known, but if you can keep
a secret--"

"Hee-hee!" tittered the other. "Now that's right smart, that be. Waren't
expectin' nobody to meet you, was you? I ain't heerd of none of the