"Hollo! what's all this?" said the driver when he got opposite the bag and Que.
"Whoa! whoa, there!" called the driver to his horses.
Now, if Que had been taking only a light, after-dinner nap, he would have been wide awake as soon as the cart stopped; for the hill was a long one, and the rumbling had been as long, and merely from lack of that lullaby, a well-conditioned boy should have wakened at once. But Que didn't.
"I declare," said the driver, "if it ain't that bran new mail-boy!" Thereupon he went up and looked at him; but not being of a magnetic temperament, he didn't wake Que that way.
"Bless the chick, if he isn't dead asleep," continued the driver, talking to himself. This driver had a habit of talking to himself, for he said, "then he was always sure of having somebody worth talking to."
"Now, won't those Pointers growl for their mail, when it is a couple of hours late? The first day, too! Que'll catch it." Then he gave Que a little roll, so that he rolled from the bag over into the grass.
"Well, I always _was_ a good-natured fellow. Guess I'll take his bag along for him, and save him the scolding."
So the driver threw the bag on top of the load of laths, and left the bag-boy to sleep it out.
When Que had slept half an hour longer, he started up, staring wide awake.
"I've been asleep," said Que; and so he had.
"My bag's been and gone," continued Que; and so it had.
But he was a bright boy, and all the brighter, perhaps, for having just been asleep; so he looked round, which is a very good thing to do when you get into trouble, and the very thing that half the people in the world never think to do.
"There are tracks in the grass; and there is a cart-track in the dust, and it had two horses, and these foot-tracks went back to it. Why, the lath man must have taken it;" and so he had.
Que started towards the Point as fast as he could go, and consequently, when he got there, which was just fifty minutes after the bag got there, he had no breath left to ask any questions about it. Still he panted on to the post-office.
"Bag of wind!" said the postmaster, emphatically.
"Humph! So you're the new mail boy--are you? Send your bag down by express, and came yourself by accommodation--didn't you?"