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"Very well, then I'll go with you now. Only stop one minute at Sanders's so that I can say good-by to him. He goes back to the agency to-morrow, I believe." "Well, he isn't there. He's gone out to pay a call. Jump in."
Long before mid-day, therefore, Sanders's words were being repeated from mouth to mouth, and Trooper Howard, with pale face and starting eyes, was shut up in the company office where only the captain and Sergeant Haney could get at him, and Devers was there with his sergeant and clerk, when just at 10.45 the telegraph operator came bulging into Mr. Leonard's office.
As the time called us to depart, we took our leave and left him standing there abashed. Having mounted our horses and entered the wagon, we rode from there about ten o'clock, over a smooth sandy road, and arrived at half-past three at Albany, or Fort Orange, where Sanders's wife was glad to see us, and where we were well received by his whole family.
The ten minutes had barely passed when Sam'l was back in the farm kitchen. He was too flurried to knock this time, and, indeed, Lisbeth did not expect it of him. "Bell, hae!" he cried, handing his sweetheart a tinsel bag twice the size of Sanders's gift. "Losh preserve's!" exclaimed Lisbeth; "I'se warrant there's a shillin's worth." "There's a' that, Lisbeth an' mair," said Sam'l, firmly.
The trainmen called him "Rags," in deference, no doubt, to his torn ear and threadbare tail. They threw coal at him as he passed, until it leaked out that he belonged to "Sanders's girl." Then they became his champions, and this name and pastime seemed out of place. Only once did he earn any distinguishing sobriquet.
"Because, although we are almost strangers at present, I know I shall find in you some one who will be companionable. You don't seem very thick with the others; you don't join with them in that mean practice of shirking work directly Mr. Sanders's back is turned; and you don't, from what I have heard, approve of the society at the King's Head, in which the others seem to take so much delight.
He never laughed now on Saturdays, and sometimes his loom was silent half the day. Sam'l felt that Sanders's was the kindness of a friend for a dying man. It was to be a penny wedding, and Lisbeth Fargus said it was delicacy that made Sam'l superintend the fitting-up of the barn by deputy. Once he came to see it in person, but he looked so ill that Sanders had to see him home.
That was when he had saved the girl's basket, after a sharp fight with a larger and less honest dog. Sanders then spoke of him, with half-concealed pride, as "the Boss," but this only lasted a day or so. Publicly, in the neighborhood, he was known as "Sanders's dog." One morning the dog came limping up the cut with a broken leg.
"Comin' in at the gate," said Florence. "He's goin' walkin' with you, too." In this crisis, Mr. Sanders's feeling was obviously one of startled anguish. He turned to Julia. "Why, this is terrible!" he said. "You told me " "Sh!" she warned him; and whispered hastily, all in a breath: "Couldn't-be-helped-explain-next-time-I-see-you." Then she advanced a gracious step to meet the newcomer.
He threw himself into Sanders's big arm-chair drawn up in front of the stove, and leaned his head on his thin, white hand. Trooper Hurley, Sanders's striker, acting under his usual instructions, presently reappeared with a decanter of whiskey, glasses, sugar, and spoon on a tray.
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