The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Dave, the Mail Carrier.

GUNBOAT SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 6 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

Frank the Young Naturalist. Frank on a Gunboat. Frank in the Woods. Frank before Vicksburg. Frank on the Lower Mississippi. Frank on the Prairie.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

SPORTSMAN’S CLUB SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

GO-AHEAD SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

Tom Newcombe. Go-Ahead. No Moss.

FRANK NELSON SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

Snowed Up. Frank in the Forecastle. Boy Traders.

BOY TRAPPER SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 3 vols. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

ROUGHING IT SERIES. By Harry Castlemon. Illustrated. 16mo. Cloth, extra, black and gold.

George in Camp.

THE MAIL CARRIER.

CHAPTER I “HARK BACK!”

“LOOK out thar, Dannie! Don’t run over a feller!”

Dan Evans, who was trudging along the dusty road, with his eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground, and his mind so wholly given up to meditation that he did not know what was going on around him, stopped suddenly when these words fell upon his ear, and looked up to find himself confronted by a horseman, who had checked his nag just in time to prevent the animal from stepping on the boy. He was a small planter in the neighborhood, and Dan was well acquainted with him.

“You’re gettin’ to be sich rich folks up to your house that you look fur everybody to get outen your way, I reckon, don’t you?” continued the planter, with a good-natured smile.

“Rich!” repeated Dan, flushing angrily, as he drew his tattered coat about him. He did not know what the planter meant, and thought he was making sport of his poverty. “I can’t help it kase I don’t wear good clothes like Don and Bert, kin I? I work monstrous hard——”

“And get well paid fur it, too, I tell you,” interrupted the horseman. “I’d be glad of a chance to ’arn that much money myself. You needn’t wear sich clothes as them no longer, kase Dave an’ you is pardners, most likely, an’ he’ll do what’s right by you.”

“Dave!” echoed Dan, who now began to listen more eagerly.

“Yes. He’s a powerful smart boy, Dave is, an’ I’m glad to see him so lucky. He took home a wad of greenbacks this arternoon as big as that,” said the planter, pushing back his sleeve and showing his brawny wrist.

Dan fairly gasped for breath. He backed toward a log by the roadside and seated himself upon it, letting his rifle fall out of his hands in his excitement.

“Yes,” continued the planter, who seemed to be a little surprised at Dan’s behavior; “them quails reached that man up North all right, an’ to-day the money come—a hundred an’ ninety-two dollars an’ a half.”

Dan gasped again, and, taking off his hat, drew his coat-sleeve across his forehead.

“Yes. Silas Jones, he done took twenty-eight dollars outen it fur freight an’ give Dave the balance—a trifle over a hundred an’ sixty-four dollars. I was in the store at the time, an’ it done me good to see Dave take them thar greenbacks an’ walk out.”

“Whar—whar’s the money now?” Dan managed to ask at last.

“Why, he took it home with him, I reckon. What else should he do with it? Now, Dannie, don’t you get on a high hoss an’ say that you won’t look at us common folks any more.”

With this parting advice the planter rode off, leaving Dan sitting on his log, lost in wonder. It was a long time before he recovered himself, and when he did, he jumped to his feet as if he had just thought of something that ought to have been attended to long ago, caught up his rifle and disappeared in the woods.

This incident happened on the same day on which Silas Jones paid David for the quails he had shipped by the steamer Emma Deane. At the close of the second volume of this series, we saw that as soon as David had received the reward of his labors he made all haste to reach home. He found his mother there, but before he said a word to her about his good fortune he walked around the cabin two or three times and looked sharply in every direction, to make sure that his brother Dan was nowhere in the vicinity; and having satisfied himself on this point, he went in and laid the roll of greenbacks in his mother’s lap.