“Whose?” I asked, concealing my irritation.  “Mr. Weston—­and who is Mr. Weston?”

Mary held up a warning finger.  There were footfalls on the gravel walk around the house.

“Sh,” she whispered, “here he comes—­no one knows who he is.”

To this day Robert Weston’s age is a mystery to me; I might venture to guess that it is between thirty and fifty.  Past thirty all men begin to dry up or fatten, and he was certainly a lean person.  His face was hidden beneath a beard of bristling, bushy red, and he had a sharp hook nose and small, bright eyes.  From his appearance you could not tell whether he was a good man or a bad one, wise or stupid, kind-hearted or a brute.  He seemed of a neutral tone.  His clothes marked him as a man of the city, for we do not wear shooting jackets, and breeches and leather leggings in our valley.  In the way he wore them there was something that spoke the man of the world, for in such a costume we of Black Log should feel dressed up and ill at ease; but his clothes seemed a part of him.  They looked perfectly comfortable and he was unconscious of them.  This is where the city men have an advantage over us country-breds.  I can carry off my old clothes without being awkward.  I could enter a fine drawing-room in the patched blouse I wear a-hunting with more ease than in that solemn-looking frock-coat I bought at the county town five years ago.  In that garment I feel that “I am.”  No one could ever convince me that I am a mere thought, a dream, a shadow.  Every pull in the shoulders, every hitch in the back, every kink in the sleeves makes me a profound materialist.  But I don’t suppose Weston would bother spreading the tails out when he sat down.  I doubt if he would know he had it on.  He is so easy in his ways.  I saw that as he came swinging around the house, and I envied him for it.

“Well, I am in luck!” he cried cheerfully.  “Here I came to see the valley’s soldier and I find him holding the valley’s flower.”

This to me was rather an astounding thing to say, and if he intended to disable me in the first skirmish he succeeded admirably, for my only answer was a laugh; and the more I laughed the more foolish and slow-witted I felt.  I wanted to run to Mary’s aid, but I did not know how, and while I was rummaging my brain for some way to meet him, she was answering him valiantly.

“Almost, but not quite,” she said.  “But he has earned the right to hold the valley’s flower entirely—­whoever she may he.  It’s a pity, Mr. Weston, you have not been doing so, too, instead of loafing around the valley all summer long.”

She did not speak sharply to him, and that angered me.  She was smiling as she spoke, and he did not seem to mind it at all.

“I came to see the veteran,” he said, “and not to be scolded.”

“You may have my chair then.”  Mary was rising.  “I shall leave you to the veteran—­if he does not object.”