"Is there any letter here for Mr. Orrin Post?" he asked the young woman who presided over the local mail. "Why, Mr. Strong!" she exclaimed, "you don't take the Posts' mail." "Why don't I take Orrin Post's letters--if he has any?" "Because Orrin Post lives clear down at the other end of Number Three route--almost fifteen miles east of the town. And you don't look anything like Orrin Post," she added, smiling. "Don't I?" "He has heaps and heaps of whiskers," laughed the young woman. "And there is no other Orrin Post that I know of." "There is a man working for me by that name," Hiram said seriously. "Then you must tell him to be sure to have his correspondents put 'Sunnyside Farm' on their envelopes addressed to him," was the advice of the postmistress. CHAPTER XXV A VISIT AND A PEST In spite of the disappointment Hiram Strong experienced regarding the party at the Bronson house in Plympton, the winter did not pass without some entertainment--and of a kind which he really enjoyed better than he had Lettie's party. The Christmas holidays ushered in a series of barn dances, surprise parties, straw rides and other country social functions organized in the Pringleton district and mostly of a nature that assured a pleasant time and plenty of clean fun. Hiram and Orrin and Jim Larry attended most of these entertainments. But Hiram hid away his dress suit and never wore it again. After a while his comrades on Sunnyside Farm ceased to gibe at him about the garments. Hiram had never asked Orrin about the invitation he might have received to the Bronsons' party. He shrank from arousing any suspicions in Orrin's mind that he, Hiram, was suspicious of him. But the young farm manager believed Lettie Bronson's note to the young man they both knew as "Orrin Post" had gone to the real Orrin Post--the bewhiskered farmer who had driven through the neighborhood with Eben Craddock, the lawyer from Cincinnati, looking for the mysterious "Theodore Chester." Was Hiram's assistant here at Sunnyside the individual that had run away from Post, the farmer, who lived fifteen miles east of Pringleton? If so, why had the young fellow given Hiram his former employer's name as his own? And then, searching his mind for the details of that long-past incident, Hiram remembered that the sick young fellow when Hiram found him in the calf shed had been delirious. He had given his name as "Orrin Post" without realizing, perhaps, what he was doing or saying. He had uttered the first name that had come into his mind--the name of the farmer who had treated him so harshly by driving him out of his house when he was taken ill.