d came
bouncing wildly up the rutty grade.

The boy straightened and stiffened, his head going forward a little,
for the fat old mare was pounding along at a lumbering gallop--a pace
which, in all the time he had watched for it, he had never before
beheld. Old Jerry was driving with a magnificent abandon, his hands
far outstretched over the dash, and more than that, for even from
where he stood Denny could hear him shouting at her in his thin,
cracked falsetto--shouting for still more speed.

A rare, amused smile tugged at the corners of Young Denny's lips as he
crossed the open yard to the crest of the hill. But when the groaning
buggy came to a standstill and Old Jerry flung the reins across the
mare's wide back, to dive and burrow in frantic haste under the seat
for the customary roll of advertisements, without so much as a glance
for the boy who strode slowly up to the wheel, that shadow of a smile
which had touched his face faded into concerned gravity. He hesitated
a moment, as if not quite certain of what he should do.

"Is there--there isn't any one sick, is there?" he asked at last, half
diffidently.

The little, white-haired old man in the buggy jerked erect with
startling, automatonlike swiftness at that slow question. For a moment
he stood absolutely motionless, his back toward the speaker, his head
perked far over to one side as though he refused to believe he had
heard correctly. Then, little by little, he wheeled until his
strangely brilliant, birdlike eyes were staring straight down into
Denny's upturned, anxious face. And as he stared Old Jerry's
countenance grew blankly incredulous.

"Sick!" he echoed the boy's words scornfully. "Sick!"

His grotesquely thin body seemed to swell as he straightened himself,
and his shrill squeak of a voice took on a new note of pompous
importance.

"I guess," he stated impressively, "I reckon, Denny, you ain't heard
the news, hev you?" He chuckled pityingly, half contemptuously. "I
reckon you couldn't've," he concluded with utter finality.

The old, sullenly bewildered light crept back into Young Denny's gray
eyes. He shifted his feet uneasily, shaking his head.

"I--I just got back down from the timber, three days ago," he
explained, and somehow, entirely unintentionally, as he spoke the slow
statement seemed almost an apology for his lack of information. "I
guess I haven't heard much of anything lately--up here. Is it--is it
something big?"

Old Jerry he