"How you scared me, Ned!" she said, as she stopped abruptly. "I thought 'twas a train, but it's only Dr. Hornblower."
True enough; up the track behind them came the excellent doctor, waving his cane in amicable salutation, as he strode along at a pace which might have put to shame the wearer of the famous seven-league boots. His leathery skin was dark and shining from the violence of his exercise, as he came sweeping on towards them, till he paused by the side of Louise, who watched him with some anxiety while he stood wheezing and panting before her.
"My dear Miss Everett," he said, when he could regain his breath enough to speak once more; "are you not afraid to walk so rapidly at this altitude? I fear you may over-exert yourself some day." He paused for a moment, puffing like the engine of an overloaded freight train; then he resumed, "I called at your residence, and was so regretful at not finding you at home that your cousin, Mrs. Pennypoker, told me that you were bound for the gulch, and assured me that there was—um—some prospect of my overtaking, not to say catching up with you."
"Are you out on the round-up again to-day, Dr. Hornblower?" asked Ned soberly.
The Reverend Gabriel looked at him with a perplexed countenance.
"I am afraid that I do not perfectly apprehend your meaning," he said.
"Why, you said, last time you called on Lou, that you were hunting up stray sheep, and I didn't know but you were out after some more to-day," Ned explained, with a naughty satisfaction in his sister's struggles to repress her smiles.
But Dr. Hornblower was quite unmoved. His professional dignity rose to the surface, and his voice took on its Sunday twang as he replied pompously,—
"No, Edward; the sheep are all in the fold. To-day I am only in search of congenial society." And he bowed gravely to Louise.
"Come on, now," whispered Grant, as he joined Allie and Ned in advance, and left Louise to follow them with her elderly admirer; "the doctor's lost his wind already, and can't keep up; but, if he wants a walk, we'll give him one."