At sundown they came to the road-ranch of Johnnie Dax, bearing Leander’s compliments as a secret despatch. The outward aspect of the place was certainly an awful warning to trustful bachelors who make acquaintances through the columns of _The Heart_ and Hand. The house stood solitary in that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors gaped wide like the unclosed eyes of a dead man on a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old white horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward as if in assent, then trotted off. “That’s Jerry, and he’s the intelligentest animal I ever see,” remarked the stage-driver, sobering up to Jerry’s good qualities, and presently Johnnie Dax and the white horse appeared together from around the corner of the house. This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the other, even to the apologetic crook in the knees and a certain furtive way of glancing over the shoulder as if anticipating missiles. “Pshaw now, ladies! why didn’t you let me know that you was coming? and I’d have tidied up the place and organized a few dried-apple pies.” “Good house-keepers don’t wait for company to come before they get to their work,” rebukefully commented the fat lady. Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill grace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the towel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they were not the fruits of the sculptor’s chisel. “Where’s your wife?” sternly demanded the fat lady. “Oh, my Lord! I presume she’s dancin’ a whole lot over to Ervay. She packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago, p’inting that way. A locomotive couldn’t stop her none if she got a chance to go cycloning round a dance.” In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they were _de trop_, continued to doze. “Come, girls, get up,” coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. “Maude, I don’t know when I see you so lazy. Run on, honey—run on with Ethel.” For Ethel, the piebald hog, finally did as she was bid. Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogs happened to have such unusual names.