o be disgraced in any such fashion. How
much of it is there?"

"Sax mal'."

"Six miles! All like this?"

"Aw-w-w some pretty well, some as much bad."

"Well, I don't know just what you mean," muttered Jerrard, "but I fear
I can imagine." After what seemed a long interval, and when Jerrard,
dizzied by the bumps and the curves, believed that the end must
be near,--for six miles are but an inconsiderable item to the
traffic-manager of a thousand-mile system,--he asked how far they had
come. The driver looked at the trees. "Wan mal', mabbee, an' some leetle
more." The railroad man opened his mouth to make a discourteous retort
reflecting on the driver's judgment of distances, but just then one of
the rear wheels slipped off a rock. It came down kerchunk. Jerrard bit
his cheek and his tongue. After that he sat and held to his seat with a
hopeless idea that the end of the road was running away from them.

Half-way through the woods he bought two fat doughnuts and a piece
of apple pie at a wayside log house. He munched his humble fare with a
gusto he had not known for years. The jolting, the shaking, the tossing
had started his sluggish blood and cleared his business-befogged brain.
His food was spiced with the aroma of the hemlocks, and when they took
to the road again he began to hum tunes.

[Illustration: Then he fell to chuckling 049-050]

Then he fell to chuckling. And when a smooth stretch suffered him to
unclasp his cramped hold, he slapped his leg mirthfully. He was thinking
what President Whittaker of the P. K. & R. would be saying in two weeks.

President Whittaker was a rotund, flabby man, whom long indulgence in
rubber-tired broughams and double-springed private cars had softened
until he reminded one of a fat down pillow.

"Jerrard," he had said, at parting, "if you find good fishing I'll
follow you in two weeks. I need a little outdoor relaxation myself."

Jerrard sent an enthusiastic letter right back by the tote-road driver.
He took the word of his guide about the fishing in prospect. In his new
and ebullient spirits he felt that he could hardly wait two weeks for
the spectacle--Whittaker in the middle seat of a buck-board, on that
six-mile carry road. And when the day came, Jerrard, now bronzed, alert
and agile walked out over the Poquette Carry, paddled down to Sunkhaze,
and received his superior with open arms.

The unconsciousness of the corpulent Whittaker as he left the train,
spick and span