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 cestry of the man before him. On that William Brunson would have taken oath. As he stood holding Jamie’s hand, he looked at him laughingly and said: “Well, I’ll be darned! I didn’t know you, and if I stand away from you, I bet Ma and Susy won’t either!”

Jamie laughed in return. “I made that lightning change in the dark last night,” he said. “Moonlight is a mighty deceptive thing. I only wanted to shed the uniform of Uncle Sam pronto, so I took the first chance that offered, but when I woke up this morning and found that my clothes were better fitted to walk than I was, I decided that I’d see how quick I could change them.”

“Come on to breakfast,” said William Brunson.

"Thank you, I’ve had my breakfast,” said Jamie MacFarlane. “If you are going to be good enough to let me ride with you so long as you are going north and west, that will be fine.”

“There isn’t any question about how long you may ride with the Brunsons,” said the husband and father of the Brunson family. “You may ride just as long as you darn please. It doesn’t make any difference to me if it is all the way to Iowa!”

So Jamie picked up a morning paper and read until Mrs. Brunson and Susy came into the office, and they really did not know him, so he had to work the burr on them before they would believe that he was their passenger of the previous night. Both of them quite agreed with the judgment of their husband and father: They did not care how long this man rode with them, and he did not care either.