until he had seen Leddy's gun safe in the holster.

Then Leddy raised himself challengingly on tiptoes to Jack, who turned to
Galway in the manner of one extending an invitation. On his part, Leddy
turned to Ropey Smith, another of Little Rivers' ruffians. After this,
Leddy went through the door at the rear; the loungers resumed their seats
on the cracker barrels and gazed at one another with dropped jaws, while
Bill Lang proceeded with his business as postmaster.

IV

HE CARRIES THE MAIL

When the suspense was over for Mary, the glare of the store lamp went
dancing in grotesque waves, and abruptly, uncannily, fell away into the
distant, swimming glow of a lantern suffused with fog. She swayed. Only
the leg-rest kept her from slipping off the pony. Her first returning
sense of her surroundings came with the sound of a voice, the same
careless, pleasant voice which she had heard at Galeria asking Pete Leddy
if he were not overplaying his part.

"You were right," said the voice. "It was the whistle that made him
so angry."

Indistinctly she associated a slowly-shaping figure with the voice and
realized that she had been away in the unknown for a second. Yes, it was
all very well to talk about Sir Walter being out of fashion, but she had
been near to fainting, and in none of the affectation of the hoop-skirt
age, either. Had she done any foolish thing in expression of a weakness
that she had never known before? Had she extended her hand for support?
Had he caught her as she wobbled in the saddle? No. She was relieved to
see that he was not near enough for that.

"By no stretch of ethics can you charge yourself with further
responsibility or fears," he continued. "Pete and I understand each other
perfectly, now."

But in his jocularity ran something which was plain, if unspoken. It was
that he would put an end to a disagreeable subject. His first words to
her had provided a bridge--and burned it--from the bank of the
disagreeable to the bank of agreeable. Her own desire, with full mastery
of her faculties coming swiftly, fell in with his. She wanted to blot out
that horror and scotch a sudden uprising of curiosity as to the exact
nature of the gamble in death through which he had passed. It was enough
that he was alive.

The blurry figure became distinct, smiling with inquiry in a glance from
her to the stack of papers, magazines, and pamphlets which crowded his
circling arms. He seemed to have emptied t