At sight of that, Boone's eyes livened yet more, for he recognized the shrouded shape though it was a thing almost as foreign to his world as starlight is to the floor of the sea. Once he had been to Marlin Town on a troubled Court day when a detachment of militia had stood guard in the square to overawe warring factions and avert bloodshed. Their failure to do so is another story, but their commanding officer had worn a sabre, and now with a stirring excitement the boy divined that, this "qu'ar contraption" dangling at the newcomer's back was nothing less portentous than a sword! Straightway the drab curtain of life's unrelief was rent for Boone Wellver, and shot through with gleaming filaments of wonderment and imaginative speculation. Here, of a sudden, came Romance on horseback, and what matter that the horse was a mule? "Son," he said in a kindly manner, "I'm bound for Cyrus Spradling's house, and I begin to suspect that I must have lost my way. How about it?" Boone did not immediately reply. He merely poured out of his wide and innocent blue eyes a scrutiny as inquisitorial as though he had been stationed here on picket duty and were vested with full authority to halt whomsoever approached. While the newcomer sat, waiting in his saddle, Boone Wellver vaulted lightly down from fence rail to gravel roadway and, standing there as slim yet as sturdy as a hickory sapling, raised one hand towards the mule's flank, but arrested it midway as he inquired, "Thet critter o' yourn--hit don't foller kickin', does hit?" "Stand clear of its heels," cautioned the man hastily. "I've known this beast only since morning--but as acquaintance ripens, admiration wanes. What's your name?" "Boone Wellver. What's yourn?" "Mine is Victor McCalloway. Does your father live near here?" "Hain't got no daddy." "Your mother, then?" "Hain't got no mammy nuther." The stranger gazed down from his saddle with interested eyes, and under the steadiness of his scrutiny Boone was smitten with an abrupt self-consciousness. "Don't you belong to any one at all?" The question was put slowly, but the reply came with prompt and prideful certitude. "I'm my own man. I dwells with a passel of old granny folks an' gray-heads, though." Having so enlightened his questioner, he added with a ring of pride, as though having confessed the unflattering truth about his immediate household, he was entitled to boast a little of more distant connections: "Asa Gregory's my fust cousin by blood. I reckon ye've done heered tell of him, hain't ye?" Across the face of Victor McCalloway flitted the ghost of a satirical smile, which he speedily repressed. "Yes," he said briefly with non-committal gravity, "I've heard of him."