This time he did not start. "All right," he answered, wiping his forehead; "if you'll let me alone, I'll be there."
At a dingy saloon corner, near the river, a shabby little man greeted him heartily and petted the mongrel. "I'm mighty glad you didn't go, after all, Joe," he added, with a brightening face.
"Go where, Happy?"
Mr. Fear looked grave. "Don't you rec'lect meetin' me last night?"
Louden shook his head. "No. Did I?"
The other's jaw fell and his brow corrugated with self-reproach. "Well, if that don't show what a thick-head I am! I thought ye was all right er I'd gone on with ye. Nobody c'd 'a' walked straighter ner talked straighter. Said ye was goin' to leave Canaan fer good and didn't want nobody to know it. Said ye was goin' to take the 'leven-o'clock through train fer the West, and told me I couldn't come to the deepo with ye. Said ye'd had enough o' Canaan, and of everything! I follered ye part way to the deepo, but ye turned and made a motion fer me to go back, and I done it, because ye seemed to be kind of in trouble, and I thought ye'd ruther be by yerself. Well, sir, it's one on me!"
"Not at all," said Joe. "I was all right."
"Was ye?" returned the other. "DO remember, do ye?"
"Almost," Joe smiled, faintly.
"ALMOST," echoed Happy, shaking his head seriously. "I tell ye, Joe, ef I was YOU—" he began slowly, then paused and shook his head again. He seemed on the point of delivering some advice, but evidently perceiving the snobbishness of such a proceeding, or else convinced by his own experience of the futility of it, he swerved to cheerfulness: