On the other hand, it was Madge who fed him; also it was she who ruled the kitchen, and it was by her favor, and her favor alone, that he was permitted to come within that sacred precinct.  It was because of these things that she bade fair to overcome the handicap of her garments.  Then it was that Walt put forth special effort, making it a practice to have Wolf lie at his feet while he wrote, and, between petting and talking, losing much time from his work.  Walt won in the end, and his victory was most probably due to the fact that he was a man, though Madge averred that they would have had another quarter of a mile of gurgling brook, and at least two west winds sighing through their redwoods, had Walt properly devoted his energies to song-transmutation and left Wolf alone to exercise a natural taste and an unbiased judgment.

“It’s about time I heard from those triolets,” Walt said, after a silence of five minutes, during which they had swung steadily down the trail.  “There’ll be a check at the post office, I know, and we’ll transmute it into beautiful buckwheat flour, a gallon of maple syrup, and a new pair of overshoes for you.”

“And into beautiful milk from Mrs. Johnson’s beautiful cow,” Madge added.  “To-morrow’s the first of the month, you know.”

Walt scowled unconsciously; then his face brightened, and he clapped his hand to his breast pocket.

“Never mind.  I have here a nice, beautiful, new cow, the best milker in California.”

“When did you write it?” she demanded eagerly.  Then, reproachfully, “And you never showed it to me.”

“I saved it to read to you on the way to the post office, in a spot remarkably like this one,” he answered, indicating, with a wave of his hand, a dry log on which to sit.

A tiny stream flowed out of a dense fern-brake, slipped down a mossy-lipped stone, and ran across the path at their feet.  From the valley arose the mellow song of meadow larks, while about them, in and out, through sunshine and shadow, fluttered great yellow butterflies.

Up from below came another sound that broke in upon Walt reading softly from his manuscript.  It was a crunching of heavy feet, punctuated now and again by the clattering of a displaced stone.  As Walt finished and looked to his wife for approval, a man came into view around the turn of the trail.  He was bareheaded and sweaty.  With a handkerchief in one hand he mopped his face, while in the other hand he carried a new hat and a wilted starched collar which he had removed from his neck.  He was a well-built man, and his muscles seemed on the point of bursting out of the painfully new and ready-made black clothes he wore.

“Warm day,” Walt greeted him.  Walt believed in country democracy, and never missed an opportunity to practice it.

The man paused and nodded.

“I guess I ain’t used much to the warm,” he vouchsafed half apologetically.  “I’m more accustomed to zero weather.”