o the first comer. She had her hand
impulsively on the door of the partition, when she stopped with a new
sense of her impaired dignity. Could she confess this to her worshipers?
But here the door opened in her very face, and a stranger entered.

He was a man of fifty, compactly and strongly built. A squarely-cut
goatee, slightly streaked with gray, fell straight from his thin-lipped
but handsome mouth; his eyes were dark, humorous, yet searching. But the
distinctive quality that struck Mrs Baker was the blending of urban ease
with frontier frankness. He was evidently a man who had seen cities and
knew countries as well. And while he was dressed with the comfortable
simplicity of a Californian mounted traveler, her inexperienced
but feminine eye detected the keynote of his respectability in the
carefully-tied bow of his cravat. The Sierrean throat was apt to be
open, free, and unfettered.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Baker," he said, pleasantly, with his hat already in
his hand, "I'm Harry Home, of San Francisco." As he spoke his eye
swept approvingly over the neat inclosure, the primly-tied papers, and
well-kept pigeon-holes; the pot of flowers on her desk; her china-silk
mantle, and killing little chip hat and ribbons hanging against the
wall; thence to her own pink, flushed face, bright blue eyes, tendriled
clinging hair, and then--fell upon the leathern mailbag still lying
across the table. Here it became fixed on the unfortunate wire of the
amorous expressman that yet remained hanging from the brass wards of the
lock, and he reached his hand toward it.

But little Mrs. Baker was before him, and had seized it in her arms. She
had been too preoccupied and bewildered to resent his first intrusion
behind the partition, but this last familiarity with her sacred official
property--albeit empty--capped the climax of her wrongs.

"How dare you touch it!" she said indignantly. "How dare you come in
here! Who are you, anyway? Go outside, at once!"

The stranger fell back with an amused, deprecatory gesture, and a
long silent laugh. "I'm afraid you don't know me, after all!" he said
pleasantly. "I'm Harry Home, the Department Agent from the San Francisco
office. My note of advice, No. 201, with my name on the envelope, seems
to have miscarried too."

Even in her fright and astonishment it flashed upon Mrs. Baker that she
had sent that notice, too, to Hickory Hill. But with it all the feminine
secretive instinct within her was n