Soon, though, the crowds thinned away. Where multitudes had been, only an occasional straggler was to be seen. The harried and fretted dust settled back. A locust in a tree began to exercise his talents in song, and against the green warp of the shrubbery on the lawn a little blue bobbin of an indigo bird went vividly back and forth. Lonesome? No, nothing like that; but the sergeant confessed to himself that possibly he was just a trifle drowsy. His head dropped forward on his badged chest, and as the cool wetness drew the fever out of his feet his toes, under water, curled up in comfort and content. Asked about it afterward, Sergeant Bagby would have told you that he had no more than closed his eyelids for a wink or two. But the shadows had appreciably lengthened upon the grass before a voice, lifted in a hail, roused him up. Over the low hedge that separated the parsonage yard from the yard adjoining on the left a man was looking at him--a man somewhere near his own age, he judged, in an instantaneous appraisal. “Cumrud,” said this person, “howdy-do?” “Which?” inquired Sergeant Bagby. “I said, Cumrud, howdy?” repeated the other. “No,” said the sergeant; “my name is Bagby.” “I taken it fur granted that you was to home all alone,” said the man beyond the hedge. “Be you?” “At this time of speakin',” said the sergeant, “there's nobody at home exceptin' me and a crop of blisters. Better come over,” he added hospitably. “Well,” said the stranger, as though he had been considering the advisability of such a move for quite a period of time, “I mout.” With no further urging he wriggled through a gap in the hedge and stood at the foot of the steps, revealing himself as a small, wiry, rust-coloured man. Anybody with an eye to see could tell that in his youth he must have been as redheaded, as a pochard drake. Despite abundant streakings of grey in his hair he was still redheaded, with plentiful whiskers to match, and on his nose a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, and on his face and neck a close sowing of the biggest, intensest freckles Sergeant Bagby had ever beheld. They spangled his skin as with red asterisks, and the gnarled hand he extended in greeting as he mounted the porch looked as though in its time it had mixed at least one million bran mashes. Achieving a somewhat wabbly standing posture in his keeler, the sergeant welcomed him in due form. “I don't live here myself,” he explained, “but I reckin you might say I'm in full charge, seein' ez I crippled myself up this mornin' and had to stay behind this evenin'. Come in and take a cheer and rest yourself.” “Thanky!” said the freckly one. “I mout do that too.” He did. His voice had a nasal smack to it which struck the sergeant as being alien. “I didn't ketch the name,” he said. “Mine's Bloomfield---Christian name, Ezra H.” “Mine's Bagby,” stated the sergeant--“late of King's Hell Hounds. You've probably heard of that command--purty nigh everybody in these parts has.”