“Late?  Well, you might be thankful you’ve got your mail at all,” he said.  “We had to go round by Willow Bluff, and didn’t think we’d get through the ford.  Ice an inch thick, any way, and Charley talked that much he’s not said anything since, even when the near horse put his foot into a badger hole.”

Rude banter followed this, but Winston took no part in it.  Hastening into the post office, he stood betraying his impatience by his very impassiveness while a sallow-faced woman tossed the letters out upon the counter.  At last she took up two of them, and the man’s fingers trembled a little as he stretched out his hand when she said: 

“That’s all there are for you.”

Winston recognized the writing on the envelopes, and it was with difficulty he held his eagerness in check, but other men were waiting for his place, and he went out and crossed the street to the hotel where there was light to read by.  As he entered it a girl bustling about a long table in the big stove-warmed room turned with la little smile.

“It’s only you!” she said.  “Now I was figuring it was Lance Courthorne.”

Winston, impatient as he was, stopped and laughed, for the hotel-keeper’s daughter was tolerably well-favored and a friend of his.

“And you’re disappointed?” he said.  “I haven’t Lance’s good looks, or his ready tongue.”

The room was empty, for the guests were thronging about the post office then, and the girl’s eyes twinkled as she drew back a pace and surveyed the man.  There was nothing in his appearance that would have aroused a stranger’s interest, or attracted more than a passing glance, as he stood before her in a very old fur coat, with a fur cap that was in keeping with it held in his hand.

His face had been bronzed almost to the color of a Blackfeet Indian’s by frost and wind and sun, but it was of English type from the crisp fair hair above the broad forehead to the somewhat solid chin.  The mouth was hidden by the bronze-tinted mustache, and the eyes alone were noticeable.  They were gray, and there was a steadiness in them which was almost unusual even in that country where men look into long distances.  For the rest, he was of average stature, and stood impassively straight, looking down upon the girl, without either grace or awkwardness, while his hard brown hands suggested, as his attire did, strenuous labor for a very small reward.

“Well,” said the girl, with Western frankness, “there’s a kind of stamp on Lance that you haven’t got.  I figure he brought it with him from the old country.  Still, one might take you for him if you stood with the light behind you, and you’re not quite a bad-looking man.  It’s a kind of pity you’re so solemn.”

Winston smiled.  “I don’t fancy that’s astonishing after losing two harvests in succession,” he said.  “You see there’s nobody back there in the old country to send remittances to me.”