have been seen, if Que hadn't been asleep just then.

"Hollo! what's all this?" said the driver when he got opposite the bag
and Que.

"All this" neither stirred nor spoke.

"Whoa! whoa, there!" called the driver to his horses.

Now, if Que had been taking only a light, after-dinner nap, he would
have been wide awake as soon as the cart stopped; for the hill was a
long one, and the rumbling had been as long, and merely from lack of
that lullaby, a well-conditioned boy should have wakened at once. But
Que didn't.

"I declare," said the driver, "if it ain't that bran new mail-boy!"
Thereupon he went up and looked at him; but not being of a magnetic
temperament, he didn't wake Que that way.

"Bless the chick, if he isn't dead asleep," continued the driver,
talking to himself. This driver had a habit of talking to himself, for
he said, "then he was always sure of having somebody worth talking
to."

"Now, won't those Pointers growl for their mail, when it is a couple
of hours late? The first day, too! Que'll catch it." Then he gave Que
a little roll, so that he rolled from the bag over into the grass.

"Well, I always _was_ a good-natured fellow. Guess I'll take his bag
along for him, and save him the scolding."

So the driver threw the bag on top of the load of laths, and left the
bag-boy to sleep it out.

When Que had slept half an hour longer, he started up, staring wide
awake.

"I've been asleep," said Que; and so he had.

"My bag's been and gone," continued Que; and so it had.

But he was a bright boy, and all the brighter, perhaps, for having
just been asleep; so he looked round, which is a very good thing to do
when you get into trouble, and the very thing that half the people in
the world never think to do.

"There are tracks in the grass; and there is a cart-track in the dust,
and it had two horses, and these foot-tracks went back to it. Why, the
lath man must have taken it;" and so he had.

Que started towards the Point as fast as he could go, and
consequently, when he got there, which was just fifty minutes after
the bag got there, he had no breath left to ask any questions about
it. Still he panted on to the post-office.

"Who are you?" asked the postmaster.

"I'm--a--bag," gasped Que.

"Bag of wind!" said the postmaster, emphatically.

"A--mail--bag!" said Que.

"Humph! So you're the new mail boy--are you? Send your bag down by
express, and came yourself by accommodation--didn't you?"