changed his mind which refused to be distracted from its reveries, then sipped from his glass at the same time setting his fan in renewed motion. His meditative mood gripped him again.
While busy with his thoughts his eyes lifted and his vision fixed itself on the distance across the field and along the ribbony road on which a vehicle of some sort could be seen approaching. The Colonel's eyes narrowed in effort to more clearly discern the object approaching. The pupils of his eyes also contracted, behind the lids, to beads of steel as the vehicle raised its trail of hot parched dust then he turned again to his fan and julep with:
"Old John can't hide himself even in his dust."
The thought caused the Colonel to chuckle with mirth at his joke till his spare frame shook him almost into an outburst of laughter.
"In a devil of a hurry, too, for this time of day," he added as an after comment, still intent on the approaching dust cloud. He turned for a moment to his refreshment and when his eyes next took in the figure, man and vehicle were turning into the open gateway at the front of the lawn a quarter of a mile away and wheeling briskly up toward the veranda. The team showed no slackening of pace till buggy and passenger had rounded the curving approach and swung up to the hitching post under the tree whose patriarchal fifty-foot branches spread themselves about the front of the house and its veranda as if to guard and protect it from all the vicissitudes of weather whether winter storms or summer suns.
