athematics are in good
running order, you will see that that was just a year.

July 1, 1860, was as fine a day in Gingoo as any day in the year; and
Que was in as high spirits as on any day in the course of his life.
Unfortunately the mail coach reached Gingoo exactly at forty minutes
past eleven, unless the driver got drunk or fell asleep, which
happened about two hundred and forty days in the year. But whether
sober, drunk, or asleep, the four coach horses always stood before
Gingoo office door by twelve o'clock at latest.

It makes no difference to you or to me when the coach stood there; but
it made a great deal of difference to Que, for twelve o'clock on the
finest day in the year, and that day the first of July, is apt to be
rather warm; and in the year 1860 it was _very_ warm. Nevertheless, at
quarter past twelve, Que started with the bag. I, happening to be at
the right side of him, saw only the bag start with Que.

Perhaps you don't see why Que should have started right in the heat of
the day; but if you had been Que, and could have heard all the
Pointers clamoring for their mail, you would have started just when
Que did. The mail-bag was made of very dark leather, and drew the sun
tremendously. Now, as Que had on a pair of light linen pants and a
little gray lined coat, of course he ought to have walked between the
bag and the sun; but not being a scientific boy, he didn't think of
that, and slung the bag over his sunny shoulder, and from that height
it trailed to the ground.

Que walked on as fast as he could, trying not to think too much of the
heat and the weight; but the peculiar odor that the sun brought from
the leather bag was blown up his nose, and down his throat, and into
his ears, by a strong south wind that blew, and before Que had time to
think whether he had better or better not, he was lying fast asleep by
the side of the road, on the grass; rather he was lying on the
mail-bag, and that was lying on the grass. Why didn't he fall on the
other side? For two reasons; first, he was attracted mail-bag way by
the sleepy odor before spoken of; and secondly, the weight was all
that way, and as he began to sleep before he began to drop, of course
the bag was his natural bed when he did drop.

The Point road was lonesome, and it must have been quite an hour
before any one came that way. Then a man and two horses, and a cart
loaded high with laths, were seen coming over the hill; that is, they
would