“Erastus has acquired a sinewy chicken from somebody’s barn yard,” it read.  “Why not bring your own plate, knife, fork, spoon and a good saw over to my hay-camp and dine with me?

“Philip.”

Diane stared with rising color at the load of hay.  From its ragged, fragrant bed, a tall, lean young man with a burned skin, was rising and lazily urging a nondescript yellow dog to do the same.  The dog conceivably demurred, for Philip removed him, yelping, by the simple process of seizing him by the loose skin at the back of his neck and dropping him overboard.  Having brushed his clothes, the young man came, with smiling composure, through the forest, the yellow dog waggling at his heels.

“I’ve read so much about breaking the news gently,” apologized Philip, smiling, “that I thought I’d better try a bit of it myself.  Hence the sylvan note.  Ras, if you go to sleep by that tree, I’ll like as not let you sleep there until you die.  Go back to camp and build a fire and hollow out the feathered biped.”

Ras slouched obediently off toward the hay-camp.

“You’ve hay in your ears!” exclaimed Diane, biting her lips.

“I’m a nomad!” announced Philip calmly.  “So’s Erastus—­so’s Dick Whittington here.  I’m likely to have hay in my ears for months to come.  Dick Whittington,” explained Philip, patting the dog, “is a mustard-colored orphan I picked up a couple of days ago.  He’d made a vow to gyrate steadily in a whirlwind of dust after a hermit flea who lived on the end of his tail, until somebody adopted him and—­er—­cut off the grasping hermit.  I fell for him, but, like Ras, a sleep bug seems to have bitten him.”

“Most likely he unwinds in his sleep,” suggested Diane politely.  And added, acidly, “Where are you going?’

“Florida!” said Philip amiably.

The girl stared at him with dark, accusing eyes.

“The trip is really no safer now,” reminded Philip steadily, “than it was when I left camp.”

“In a huff!” flashed Diane disparagingly.

“In a huff,” admitted Philip and dismissed the dangerous topic with a philosophic shrug.

“I won’t have you trailing after me on a hay-wagon!” exclaimed Diane in honest indignation.

“Hum!  Just how,” begged Philip, “does one go about effecting a national ordinance to keep hay-carts off the highway?”

As Philip betokened an immediate desire to name over certain rights with which he was vested as a citizen of the United States, Diane was more than willing to change the subject.  Persistence was the keynote of Mr. Poynter’s existence.

“Johnny,” begged Philip, “get Miss Diane some chicken implements, will you, old man?  And lend me some salt.  You see,” he added easily to Diane, “Ras and I are personally responsible for an individual and very concentrated grub equipment.  It saves a deal of fussing.  I carry mine in my pocket and Ras carries his in his hat, but he wears a roomier tile than I do and never climbs out of it even when he sleeps.  Thank you, Johnny.  I’ll send Ras over with your supper.  But if it seems to be getting late, look him up.  He may fall asleep.”