“Evening.”

“Evening, stranger.”

“Own this land?”

“No; rent it.”

“Could I camp here?”

The shepherd lifted his moustache again and spat; when he spoke his eyes held steadily and sadly on the little stone, which he had missed again.

“Can’t think of nobody who’d stop you.”

“That your house over there?  You rent that?”

He pointed to a broken-backed ruin which stood on the point of land that jutted out onto the waters of the lake, a crumbling structure slowly blackening with time.

“Nope.”

A shadow of a frown crossed the face of the stranger and was gone again more quickly than a cloud shadow brushed over the window on a windy city in March.

“Well,” he said, “this place looks pretty good tome.  Ever fish those streams?”

“Don’t eat fish.”

“I’ll wager you’re missing some first-class trout, though.  By Jove, I’d like to cast a couple of times over some of the pools I’ve passed in the last hour!  By the way, who owns that house over there?”

“Same feller that owns this land.”

“That so?  What’s his name?”

The other lifted his shaggy eyebrows and stared at the stranger.

“Ain’t been long around here, eh?”

“No.”

“William Drew, he owns that house.”

“William Drew?” repeated the rider, as though imprinting the word on his memory.  “Is he home?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll ride over and ask him if he can put me up.”

“Wait a minute.  He may be home, but he lives on the other side of the range.”

“Very far from here?”

“Apiece.”

“How’ll I know him when I see him?”

“Big feller—­grey—­broad shoulders.”

“Ah!” murmured the other, and smiled as though the picture pleased him.  “I’ll hunt him up and ask him if I can camp out in this house of his for a while.”

“Well, that’s your party.”

“Don’t you think he’d let me?”

“Maybe; but the house ain’t lucky.”

“That so?”

“Sure.  There’s a grave in front of it.”

“A grave?  Whose?”

“Dunno.”

“Well, it doesn’t worry me.  I’ll drop over the hill and see Drew.”

“Maybe you’d better wait.  You’ll be passin’ him on the road, like as not.”

“How’s that?”

“He comes over here on Tuesdays once a month; to-morrow he’s about due.”

“Good.  In the meantime I can camp over there by that stream, eh?”

“Don’t know of nobody who’d stop you.”

“By the way, what brings Drew over here every month?”

“Never asked him.  I was brung up not to ask questions.”

The stranger accepted this subtle rebuke with such an open, infectious laugh that the shepherd smiled in the very act of spitting at the stone, with the result that he missed it by whole inches.