"Go by that path, thar," said Lorey, suddenly, and pointing, as Holton started to return by the direct route he had followed as he came. "It air round-about, but it'll lead you to th' valley. I'll run no risk o' your warnin' him."

"Don't you be skeered," said Holton. "I'll keep mum, no matter what happens."

With a grim smile he started down the path which the mountaineer had pointed out.

"Laid his whip acrost my face!" he muttered as he went. "Trifled with my gal! Him an' Ben Lorey's son—let 'em fight it out! I'm so much th' better off."

And Lorey, slipping back into the shadow of a rock, after he had made quite certain that the stranger was following his directions, was reflecting, bitterly: "He's come atween me an' th' gal I love! He's put th' revenoo hounds upon my track! Oh, if he had a dozen lives, I'd have 'em all!"

For ten alert and watchful minutes, which seemed to stretch to hours, he crouched there, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the coming of the man he hated. During five of these he listened to the sounds of Holton's downward progress, brought to his keen ear on the soft breezes of the young night. There came the crackling of a twig, the thud, thud, thud of a dislodged stone bounding down the slope, the rustle of leaves as the old man shuffled through a pocket of them gathered in the lea of some protruding rock by vagrant winds. Then all was still. He did not guess that Holton had been anxious that these sounds should reach him; that he had stumbled down the trail with awkward feet with no thought in his mind but to be certain that the sounds should reach him. Such was the case, however, and, after he felt sure that the crouching mountaineer above must be convinced that he had gone on to the valley, the old man turned, catlike, re-ascended with a skill as great as Lorey's own, and, with not a sound to warn the mountaineer that he had retraced any of his steps, took cautious place behind a rock upon the very edge of the open space where, when Layson came, he felt quite sure a tragedy would be enacted.

Then Layson came blithely up the trail. He had gone through the engineer's report with care. The coal prospects included the girl's land. He was full of rare elation at thought of the good luck which had descended on the little mountain-maid, full of pleasant plans for a bright future from none of which she was omitted.

His dreams were rudely interrupted as Joe Lorey stepped ominously from behind the rock where he had waited for him.

"Hold up your hands!" the mountaineer commanded, with his rifle levelled at the advancing youth.

"Joe Lorey!" exclaimed Layson.

"You know what air between us. Your time air come. If you want to pray, do it quick, for my finger air itchin' to pull th' trigger."

Layson's blood and breeding told, in this emergency. He did not flinch a whit. "I'm ready," he said calmly. "I'm not afraid to die, though it's hard to meet death at the hands of a coward."

"Coward!" said the mountaineer, amazed. "You call me that?"

"The man who shoots another in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life, deserves no better name."

This appealed to Lorey. So had his father died—at the hands of one who killed him in cold blood, giving him no chance for his life. "You shan't die callin' me that!" he cried. He leaned his rifle against a nearby rock, threw his knife upon the ground beside it, pulled off his coat, and thus, unarmed, advanced upon his enemy. "We're ekal now," he said with grim intensity, and pointed to the chasm through which ran the stream which made Madge Brierly's refuge an island. "That gully air a hundred feet straight down," he said, "an' its bottom air kivered with rocks. When we're through, your body or mine'll lay there. Air you ready?"

Holton, tense with excitement, was watching every move of the two men from his hidden vantage point. Upon his face was the expression of an animal of prey.

"Ready!" said Frank, quietly.

It was a terrific struggle which ensued. The trained muscles of the lowland athlete were matched against the lithe thews of the mountaineer so evenly that, for a time, there was doubt of what the outcome might be. Holton, watching, watching, thrilled with every second of it. Little he cared which man won; the best thing which possibly could happen, for his own good, he reflected, would be that both should crash down to the bottom of the gully locked in one of their bear-hugs, to fall together on the jagged rocks below. The fierce breathing of the contestants, the shuffle of their struggling feet upon the ground, the occasional involuntary groan from one man or the other as his adversary crushed him in embrace so painful that an exclamation could not be suppressed, were all music to the ears of the old man behind the rock. Both youths were perils to him. Let them kill each other. He would be the gainer, whatever the outcome of the battle.

Suddenly Frank's foot slipped on a rolling pebble. Instantly Lorey had taken advantage of the mishap, and, with a quick wrench, thrown him crashing to the earth. He lay there, scarcely breathing, utterly unconscious.

The mountaineer bent over him, ready to meet the first sign of revival with renewed attack, his bloodshot eyes strained on the face of the young man upon the ground. Then, anxious to be satisfied that his prostrate enemy was not feigning, he knelt by him and peered into his face, placed his hand upon his chest above his heart, felt his pulse with awkward fingers. He wondered, now, if he had not killed him, outright, for Frank's head had struck the ground with a terrific impact. But Layson's nostrils soon began to dilate and contract with a spasmodic breathing. He still lived.

Rendered careless by the excitement of the moment, Joe again yielded to the habit engendered by much solitude and spoke his thoughts aloud.

"It'll be long afore he'll stir," he muttered. "I'll throw him down into th' gully."

He rose, and, going to the side of the ravine, peered over with a fearful curiosity at the brawling torrent, cut into foam-ribbons by a horde of knife-edged rocks. Then he went to Layson and stretched out his hand to grasp his shoulder.

Occurred a psychological phenomenon. He found his courage fail at thought of laying hands upon the man as he was stretched there helpless.

"I—I can't touch him!" he exclaimed. "It'd be—why, it'd be like handlin' th' dead!"

He drew back, nonplussed, ashamed of his own timidity, yet unable to overcome it. He had felled the man and meant to kill him, yet, now, he could not bring himself to lay a hand upon him.

The thought then flashed into his mind of the dreadful contents of his old game-sack.

"Th' bomb," he said. "Th' dynamighty bomb that I was savin' for th' revenuers! Let that finish out th' man as set 'em onto me!"

He took the bomb from the old sack with trembling fingers, laid it by Frank's side and, with a match which flickered because the hands which held it were unsteady as a palsied man's, set fire to the fuse. Then he drew off to one side.

"Now, burn!" he said, with set teeth and lowering brow. "Burn! Burn!"

For a second he stood there, watching the sparking sputter of the powder as it slowly ate its way along the little paper tube. Then, suddenly, a dreadful thought occurred to him. The girl! What if Madge Brierly should come to meet the lowlander before the bomb exploded, should see him lying there, should hurry to him, frightened, and get there just in time to—

He shuddered. He must protect the girl he loved! She could reach the side of the endangered man only by means of the small bridge. But one rope held it in position above the deep, precipitous-sided gully.

He raised his rifle to his shoulder. It was a hard shot, one which most men would have deemed impossible, but there was a star in line. He fired. The bridge crashed down, a ruin, the severed rope now dangling limply, freed of the burden it had held for many years.

"She's safe!" said he.

For another instant he stood studying the spluttering fuse. From what he had seen at the railroad workings he knew it was destined to burn long enough so that many workmen could get out of danger before the spark reached the strong explosive in the cartridge. He need not hurry.

"In three minutes it'll all be ended," he reflected. "He's as helpless as a baby; he can't strike back, now; it's no more nor he deserves. I'm goin'."

He straightened up and would have hurried off, had not, at just that moment, the sweet voice of the girl he loved rung through the brooding, fragrant evening air, in song.

It brought him to himself, it filled him with a horrified realization of the foulness of the deed which he was contemplating.

"No—no!" said he. "Why, I'd be the coward that he called me!"

He hurried to the fuse and, with trembling eagerness, stamped out the spark which, now, was creeping close indeed to that point where it would have blossomed into the terrifying flower of death.

"I'll fight him ag'in," he said; and then, addressing the now extinguished fuse, the harmless cartridge of explosive: "You lie thar and prove ter him I ain't no coward!"

He hurried down the trail.

Holton, vastly disappointed, crept out from his hiding place. "The fool!" he muttered. "Oh, the fool! That thar little spark would a' put me even an' made me safe fer life! An' it war lighted—it war lighted!"

His regret was keen. He raged there like a madman robbed of his intended prey. Then, suddenly:

"But—who'll believe him when he says he put it out? I'll—do it!"

He hastily took out a match, struck it, relighted the dead fuse.

"It'll be his work, not mine!" he thought, exultantly, as he paused to see that the fuse would surely burn.

As he turned to hasten from the spot he caught a glimpse of something white across the gully at the thresh-hold of the girl's cabin. For a second this was terrifying, but he quickly regained poise. The bridge was gone. She could not reach the side of the endangered man to save him, she could not reach the mainland to pursue him and discover his identity. He fled.

The girl was worried by the long delay in Layson's coming. For fully half an hour she had been listening for his cheery hail—that hail which had, of late, come to mean so much to her—as she worked about her household tasks. The last words he had said to her had hinted at such unimagined possibilities of riches, of education, of delirious delights to come, that her impatience was but natural; and, besides this, Joe's words had worried her. She did not think the mountaineer would ever really let his jealousy lead him to a foul attack upon his rival, but his words had worried her. She stood upon her doorstep, hand above her eyes, and peered across the gorge toward where the trail debouched into the little clearing.

Nothing was in sight there, and her gaze wandered along the little rocky field, in aimless scrutiny. Finally it chanced upon the prostrate form of the young man.

"What's that lyin' thar?" she thought, intensely startled. And then, after another moment's peering: "Why, it's Mr. Frank!"

She was amazed and frightened. Then her eye caught the little sputtering of sparks along the fuse. It further startled her.

"It's Mr. Frank and somethin's burnin' close beside him!"

Suspicion flashed into her mind like lightning, followed, almost instantly, by firm conviction.

"It's a fuse," she cried, "an' thar by him is th' bomb! It's Joe Lorey's work! Oh, oh—"

She sprang down the rough path toward the place where, ever since she could remember, the little bridge had swung. Now, though, it was gone.

"The bridge!" she cried. "The bridge! It's gone! I can't cross! I've got to see him die!"

Her frantic eyes caught sight of the frayed rope, dangling from the firm supports which had so long held up the bridge by means of it. Instantly her quick mind saw the only chance there was to save the man whom, now, she knew she loved. She sprang for the rope and caught it, gave herself a mighty push with both her agile feet, and, hanging above certain death if hold should fail or rope break, swung across the chasm and found foothold on the mainland.

In another second she was at the side of the unconscious man. Another and she had the cartridge, sputtering fuse and all, in her right hand, another and the deadly thing was hurtling to the bottom of the deep ravine, whence an almost immediately ensuing crashing boom told her that she had not arrived a moment sooner than had been essential to the salvation of the man she loved.

She knelt by Frank, pulled his head up to her knee, chafed at his insensate hands, and called to him wildly, fearing that he was dead.



CHAPTER XII

Joe Lorey was unhappy in his mountains. After the visiting party had gone down from Layson's camp, and, in course of time, Layson himself had followed them because of the approach of the great race which was to make or mar his fortunes, the man breathed easier, although their coming and the subsequent events had made, he knew, impressions on his life which never could be wiped away. He hated Layson none the less because he had departed. He argued that he had not gone until he viciously had stolen that thing which he, Lorey, valued most: the love of beautiful Madge Brierly. He brooded constantly upon this, neglecting his small mountain farm, spending almost all his time at his illegal trade of brewing untaxed whisky in his hidden still, despite the girl's continual urgings to give up the perilous occupation before it was too late. He had told her that he would, if she would marry him; now that she would not, he told her surlily that he would continue to defy the law even if he knew that every "revenuer" in the state was on his trail. He was conscious that there was real danger; he believed that Layson knew about the still and that the bitter enmity resulting from the fight which had so nearly proved his death might prompt him to betrayal of the secret; but with the stubbornness of the mountaineer he clung doggedly to his illegal apparatus in the mountain-cave, kept doggedly at the illegal work he did with it. It was characteristic of the man, his forbears and his breed in general, that, now, when he knew that deadly danger well might threaten, he sent more moonshine whisky from the still than ever had gone from it in like length of time, either in his father's day or his.

That his actual and only dangerous enemy was Holton, he did not, for an instant, guess. He knew of not the slightest reason why this stranger should include him in the hatred he had sworn he felt for Layson—that hatred which, he had assured him, was as bitter as his own. He would have been as much astonished as dismayed had he known that Holton's almost instant action, upon arriving at the county-seat, had been to make a visit to the local chief of the Revenue-Service—cautiously, at night, for to be known as an informer might have cost his life at other hands than Lorey's, would have made the mountain for far miles blaze vividly with wrath against him.

So, defiant of the man he thought to be his foe, unconscious of the hatred of the man who really was, Lorey was working in his still when a small boy, sent up from a cabin far below, dashed, breathless, to him with the news that revenue-men were actually upon their way in his direction. He had scarcely time to put his fire out, hide the lighter portions of his apparatus and flee to a safe hiding-place, nearby, before, clambering with lithe skill and caution almost equal to his own along the rocky pathways of the mountain-side, armed like soldiers scouting in a hostile country, cool-eyed as Indians, hard-faced as executioners, they actually appeared.

For a time, as Lorey watched their progress from his covert, he held his rifle levelled, held his finger on its trigger, determined to kill them in their tracks; and it was no thrill of mercy for the men or fear of consequences to himself which saved their lives. It was rather that he did not wish further to risk his liberty until he had had opportunity to glance along the gleaming barrel of his rifle as it was pointed at Frank Layson's heart.

After the men had gone he went back to his still to view the ruins they had left behind them. His wrath was terrible. Madge, who had, of course, learned what had happened almost instantly, for the still was scarcely out of hearing of her cabin, tried vainly to console, to calm him. He turned on her with a rage of which, in all her life among hot-tempered mountaineers, she had never seen the equal, and chokingly swore vengeance on the man who had given the information which had resulted in the raid.

"They come straight to th' still," he told her, "never falterin', never wonderin' if, maybe, they was on th' right path. Ev'ry inch o' th' hull way had been mapped out for 'em, an' they didn't make a mis-step from th' valley to th' very entrance o' th' cave. I'll git th' chap that planned their course out for 'em thataway! I'll git 'im, Madge! I'll git 'im, sure!"

Her heart sank in her breast like lead. She knew perfectly whom Lorey meant. She knew as perfectly that Layson never had informed upon the moonshiner, but she also knew that Heaven itself could not, then, convince the man of that.

"Who do you mean you'll git, Joe?" she faltered, hoping against hope that she was wrong in her suspicions.

"You know well enough," he answered. "Who would I mean but that damn' furriner, Frank Layson? He warn't satisfied with comin' here an' stealin' you away from me! He had to put th' revenuers on th' track o' th' old still that was my dad's afore me, an' has been th' one thing, siden you, I've ever keered fer in my life."

"You're wrong, Joe," she insisted. "You're shore wrong. Frank Layson'd never do a coward's trick like that!"

"He done it!" Lorey answered doggedly. "He done it, an' as there is a God in Heaven he air goin' to pay th' price fer doin' it!"

With that he stalked off down the trail, his rifle held as ever in the crook of his elbow, his brows as black as human brows could be.

For a time she sat there on a rock, gazing after him, half-stupefied, with eyes wide, terror-stricken. What could a mere girl do to avert the dreadful tragedy impending? Tireless as he was, she knew that he could keep upon the trail for twenty-four hours without a pause, and that such travelling, with the lifts which he would get from mountain teamsters, would take him to the home of the man whose life he had determined to snuff out at any hazard. Beside herself with fright for Frank, she sped back to her cabin, took what food was ready-cooked and could be bundled up to carry on the journey, put on her heaviest shoes and started for the door. But, suddenly, the thought flashed through her mind that, even as Joe Lorey was bound down the trails to meet his rival, so would she be bound down them to meet her own. She could not bear the thought of facing Barbara Holton, clad, as she was now, in rough, half-shapeless, mountain-homespun. She made another bundle, larger than the one which held her food, by many times, and, when she finally set off, this bundle held the finery which she had so laboriously prepared in the mad hope of rivaling the work of the bluegrass belle's accomplished city dressmakers.

Down in the bluegrass home of the ancient Layson family all was excitement in anticipation of the race which was to mean so much to the fortunes of the young master of the fine old mansion which, with pillared porticos and mighty chimneys, dominated the whole section. Layson's heart was filled with confidence whenever he went to the stables to view the really startling beauty of the lovely animal on which his hope was pinned; it sunk into despair, when, seated in his study in the house, away from her, he counted up the cost of all which he would lose if she did not run first in the great race.

None but the Colonel, Miss Alathea and himself had an idea of the real magnitude of the stakes dependant on Queen Bess. Upon the glossy shoulders of the lovely mare rested, indeed, a great burden of responsibility. If she won she would not only secure the large purse for the owner, but be salable for a price which would enable him to take advantage, fully, of the offer which the syndicate had made to develop his coal lands. If she failed—well, the fortunes of the house of Layson would be seriously shattered.

No wonder, then, that Uncle Neb, in whom his master's confidence was absolute, had strict injunctions closely to guard the mare. The faithful negro watched her with a vigilance which was scarcely less unremitting in the daytime than it was at night when he slept upon the very straw which bedded her.

Miss Alathea, intensely prejudiced against horse-racing and the gambling which invariably goes with it, by the Colonel's wasted life and her own ensuing loneliness, nevertheless prayed night and day that Queen Bess would be victorious, for Frank had finally refused, point-blank, to let her risk her fortune in the scheme for the development of his coal-lands, and so, if the mare lost and the eastern firm refused to purchase her at the large price which would enable him to join the syndicate, his great chance would be gone. Perhaps not once in the world's history had any maiden-lady, constitutionally opposed to betting and the race-track, given as much thought to an impending contest between horses on which great sums were certain to be won and lost, as Miss Alathea did, these days.

And if Miss Alathea was excited, what should be said about the gallant Colonel? Every day he visited the Layson place; every day he scrutinized the mare with wise and anxious eyes; every day he from his soul assured her owner and her owner's aunt that it was quite impossible that she should lose; every day he cautioned Neb, her guardian, to let no human being, whom he did not know and whom he and his master had not every cause to trust implicitly, approach the splendid beast. Wise in the ways of race-tracks and the unscrupulous men who have, unfortunately, thrown the sport of kings into sad disrepute, he feared some treachery continually.

Neb scarcely left the stable-yard, by day, unless the mare went with him, by night he slept so that he could, by reaching out a wrinkled, ebon hand, actually touch her glossy hide. He fed her himself with oats and hay which he examined with the utmost care before they found her manger or her rack; he watered her himself with water from a well within the stable and guarded by locked doors, drawn in a pail which, invariably, he rinsed with boiling water before he filled it up for her. No drugs should reach that mare if he could help it! None but himself or his "Marse Frank" was under any circumstances permitted to get on her back. If watchfulness could possibly preserve the mare unharmed and in fine shape until the day of the great race, Neb plainly meant to see that this was done. Even the amateur brass-band and glee-club into which he had organized the stable-boys and other negro lads about the place, and of which he acted as drum-major—the proudest moment of his life were when he donned the moth-eaten old shako which was his towering badge of leadership—must practice nowhere save within the stable-yard, where he could train them and, at the same time, keep watchful eyes upon Queen Bess' quarters.

The negroes, young and old, about the place, indeed, were wild with their enthusiasm for the mare. The day before the race a delegation of them, full of eagerness, met Neb as he came out of the stable.

"Say, Unc Neb," said one of them, "we-all's made a pool."

"Pool on de races?"

"Uh-huh! An' we-all wants to know jes' what we ought to put ouah money on."

They well knew what he would say.

"Queen Bess, fo' suah," he answered, to their vast delight. "Queen Bess ebery time. She's fit to run fo' huh life."

The boys accepted the suggestion with a shout, and he was about to enter into one of the long dissertations on the strong points of his equine darling, when he was informed that some stranger was approaching. He peered down the road with his old eyes, but could not recognize the visitor.

"Who is it?" he asked one of the black lads.

"Marse Holton."

"Marse Holton!" he repeated dryly. "Run along, now, honiest. Unc' Neb gwine be busy. I won't hab dat ar Marse Holton pryin' round dat mare. Hoodoo her fo' suah." He sidled to the stable door, and, careful to see that his bent body hid the operation from the coming visitor, turned the key in the big lock. The key he then slipped into his capacious trousers pocket.

"Hello, Neb," said Holton, affably, as he came up.

"Ebenin', suh." Neb added nothing to this greeting and went nonchalantly to a distant bench to sit down on it carelessly.

"I say, Neb," said Holton, "I expect to do a little betting, so I thought I'd jest drop over and take a look at Layson's mare."

Neb sat immovable upon his bench. At first, indeed, he did not even speak, but, finally, he looked at Holton calmly, took the key out of his pocket, tossed it in the air, caught it as it came down, put it back into his pocket and dryly said: "T'ink not, suh."

Holton, paying no attention to him, had gone on to the stable-door and tried it. Finding it to be fast locked, he turned back toward the darkey. "The door's locked, Neb," he said.

"Knowed dat afore, suh," Neb replied.

Holton was nettled by his nonchalance. "Open that door!" he ordered.

"Not widout Marse Holton's ohduhs, suh," Neb answered calmly.

"What do you mean?" demanded Holton, angrily.

"Jus' what I say, suh."

Holton made a slightly threatening movement toward him, but Neb did not even wink.

"Don't git riled, suh—bad fo' de livuh, suh."

Holton, now, was very angry. "Look here," he said, advancing on the aged negro angrily. "Do you dare insult a friend and neighbor of Mr. Layson?"

Neb slowly rose and answered with some dignity: "I dares obey Marse Frank's plain ohduhs, suh. Dat mare represents full twenty-fi' thousan' dolluhs to him" (Neb rolled the handsome figures lovingly upon his tongue), "an' dere's thousan's more'll be bet on huh to-morruh." He looked at Holton with but thinly veiled contempt. "Plenty men 'u'd risk deir wuthless lives to drug huh."

"Oh, shucks!" said Holton, trying to control his temper because of his great eagerness to get in to the mare. "She would be safe with me; you know it."

"I knows Marse Frank hab barred ebery window an' sealed ebery doah but dis one, an' gib me ohduhs to let no one in 'cept he is by. I stan's by dem ohduhs while dere's bref in my ol' body."

Holton was infuriated. "It's lucky for you I'm not your master!"

"Dat's what I t'ink, suh."

"If you was my nigger, I'd teach you perliteness with a black-snake whip! I'll see what Layson'll say to such sass as you've gin me. Jest you wait till you hear from him."

Neb was not impressed by the man's wrath. "Huhd from him afoah, suh. Oh, I'll wait, I'll wait."

He went up to the stable-door, unlocked it and stood in the open portal. Holton would have followed him, but Neb began to close the door.

"You'll wait, too, suh," said the negro, grinning, "on de outside, suh."

He closed and locked the door on the inside.

Holton was beside himself with wrath. "Damn him! Damn him!" he exclaimed. "Damn him and damn his proud young puppy of a master! I'll ruin him! I'll set my foot on him and smash him, yet!"

Baffled, he walked down the drive.

"There's a way," he told himself. "It's bold and risky, but nobody'll suspicion me. I've kept straight here in the bluegrass. The mountains and all as ever knowed me thar are far away!"

But all who had known him in the mountains were not as far away as he supposed. Even as he spoke a dusty, weary figure in worn homespun, carrying a mammoth bundle, limping sadly upon bruised and blistered feet, came through the shrubbery, approaching the great stables from the far side of the big house-lot. Holton looked at this wayfarer with amazement.

"Madge Brierly!" he cried. "Gal, what are you a-doin' here?"

"Don't know's I've got any call to tell you," Madge replied, almost as much astonished at the sight of him as he had been at sight of her. Then she smiled roguishly at him. "Maybe you'll find out, though."

"I tell you this ain't no place for you," he admonished her. "Lordy! They takes up folks that looks like you, for vagrants. Take my advice, turn back to the mountings."

She looked at him with that same smile, still unimpressed.

For no reason which he could have well explained the man was almost panic-stricken in his keen anxiety to get the girl away from the old Layson homestead and the possibility of meeting those who dwelt therein.

"Here, if you'll go," he added, and thrust his hand into his pocket, "I'll give you money—money to help you on your way."

Still she smiled at him with that aggravating, meaning smile; that smile which he could by no means fathom and of which she scarcely knew the meaning. "No," she said, "I don't want your money. You couldn't hire me to leave the bluegrass till I've seen Frank Layson."

Seeing that she was determined, unable to conjecture what she had come down for, realizing, upon second thought, that it was most improbable that she had any tale to tell of him, he reluctantly gave way. "As you will, then," he said slowly. "But let me warn you that you won't be welcome hyar. You'll learn the difference between the mounting and the bluegrass folks. You'd better think it over and turn back."

"I'll not," said she.

As he walked disgustedly away she watched him curiously. "I wonder why he is so sot on makin' me go back?" she mused. "Maybe he air right in sayin' that I won't be welcome; but I'll do my duty, just th' same!"

Neb came out from the stable. The girl saw him with delight. "Dellaw!" she said. "How tired I be! Howdy, Uncle Neb; howdy!"

"Sakes alive!" he cried. "It's de frenomenom, come down frum de mountains! Howdy, honey, howdy!" He hurried toward her and saw that she was near to tears from weariness and the strain of what she had gone through and what she had to tell. "Why, chil', what's de mattuh?"

"Pebble in my shoe," she answered, and busied herself as if removing one. "All right in a minute. This air a long way from th' mountings."

"Honey, you don't mean you walked!"

"Had to. Wings ain't growed, yet. Say; I've come to bring a word to Mr. Frank. Is he to home?" She motioned toward the stable, which was the finest building she had ever seen.

"Yes; but he don't lib dar, honey."

"Don't he? Who does, then?"

"Queen Bess."

"Queen Bess!" The girl was thunderstruck; her worry choked her. She knew Frank owned a blooded mare, but did not know her name, and she had but vaguely heard of queens. "Well—air she to home?"

"Yes; an' Marse Frank, an' Miss 'Lethe, an' Miss Barbara's comin', purty soon, to see huh."

"Miss Barbarous!" said Madge, aroused by the mere mention of the girl who, from the start, she had recognized, instinctively, as her real enemy. It had been thought of her, alone, which had made her bear the weary burden of the bundle on the long journey from the mountains. "I'd like to fix a little, 'fore she comes. I got some idees o' fashion from her, when she was up thar, an' I been workin' ev'ry minute I could spare, since then, on a new dress. Ain't thar some place I can go to fashion up before they come?"

The old negro was acutely sympathetic. He disliked Miss Barbara and liked the mountain girl. His old black head, thick as it was, sometimes, had quickly recognized the fact that Barbara regarded Madge as one to be despised, humiliated, while his master treated her with much consideration and thought highly of her. He did not like the daughter of Horace Holton any better than he liked the man himself. If he could help the mountain girl he would. The only place where she could possibly find privacy, without going to the house, was in the stable with the race-horse. He would have trusted no one else on earth with her; to distrust Madge, however, did not once occur to him.

"Missy," he said slowly, "I reckon you can go right in dar wid Queen Bess."

She was a bit appalled. "Maybe she wouldn't like it," she objected.

"She won't keer if you don't go too close."

"I'm kinder 'feared."

"Don't gib her no chance to kick. You's all right, den."

"Kick!" said the girl, amazed. Kicking did not seem to her to fit the character of queens.

Neb unlocked the stable door. "Or bite," he added.

"Bite! Dellaw!" the girl exclaimed, still more amazed. How little she had learned of royalty up in the mountains!

The aged negro threw the door wide open. "Go in, honey, now; go in," he said.

"I'm skeered!" she said, and tiptoed to the stable door. She peered in cautiously. Then she turned and faced him with much-puzzled eyes. "I don't see nothin' but a hoss," she said.

"Uh-huh; dat's Queen Bess." Old Neb stood chuckling, looking at her.

"Queen Bess is Mister Frank's race-hoss!" she cried, delighted by the revelation. "Well, now, I feel to home." She went into the stable with her bundle, half-closed the door and then peeped out at Neb. "You won't let any one come in?"

He held the key up reassuringly. "Don't you see I's got de key, honey?"

"I'd feel safer if I had that key myself," said she, and snatched it from him. An instant later and the door was closed and locked on the inside.

Neb was alarmed. He had disobeyed plain orders in letting her go in at all. For him to let that key out of his possession was a further violation which he feared to be responsible for. He pounded on the door. "Open de doah, honey," he implored. "I mus' hab dat key!"

"All right," said she, "soon's I am dressed."

He fell back from the door dismayed. "De Lawd help me!" he groaned. "What's I gwine ter do? An' I war so mighty firm 'bout dat key wid Marse Holton!" He paced the space before the stable door in agitation. "But I reckon she'll be t'rough befo' Marse Frank comes," he comforted himself.

She was not, though. While Neb still paced the stable yard in acute worry, Frank, Miss Alathea, Barbara and Holton came toward him in a laughing group. He almost fainted.

"Here we are, Neb," his master cried, "ready for a look at Queen Bess."

"Yessah, yessah, pwesently!" Neb stammered, and would have paled had nature made provision for such exhibition of his feelings. "I jus' nachelly hab got to speak to dem ar stable boys a minute, fust. Jus' 'scuse me fo' a minute, suh." He vanished hurriedly, hoping that by this diversion he could gain a little time for Madge and for himself.

Layson gazed after him with some astonishment, then went and tried the stable door. "Of course the door's locked," he explained, annoyed, "but he'll be back here in a minute."

Miss Alathea smiled. The attitude of the young master toward the aged negro often was amusing to her. She liked to watch the constant evidence of that rare affection which formed an inseparable bond between them.

Suddenly she heard the crunching of a man's heavy footsteps on the gravel, back of them. Turning, she saw that the newcomer was the Colonel, and the Colonel in great haste. This was most impressive, for the Colonel did not often hurry.

"Here comes the Colonel, Frank," she said, "and see how he is hurrying!"

"Something's up," her nephew answered, "when the Colonel hurries." Then, as the horseman came up to them: "Why, Colonel, what's the matter?"

"A shock! A regular shock! As I came from Lexington, just now, I saw you standing here, so I sent the boy on with the buggy and cut across to meet you. Just as I passed the thicket by the spring I caught a glimpse of a man, who then vanished like a ghost, but I swear that man was that lank mountaineer, Joe Lorey, and that he tried to keep out of my sight."

"Joe Lorey!" Frank exclaimed. "What can he want down here?"

"Who knows? Maybe to finish the work he began in the mountains."

"More than likely," Holton ventured. "A rifleshot in the back, or a match touched to a building."

"I don't believe it," Frank said stoutly. "The man who laid down his weapons to give me a fair, square fight, wouldn't stoop to things like that."

"'Pears to me the man who fired that bomb 'u'd do most anythin'," said Holton.

"That was in a fit of anger. Lorey swore to Madge that he thought better of his impulse to do murder, stamped upon the burning fuse, and believed that he had put it out, and I believe him."

He saw, now, that his aunt was badly frightened, and cautioned the other men. "Not another word about him, now, at any rate, or Aunt 'Lethe won't once close her eyes to-night."

"Well," said the Colonel, quite agreeing with him and hastening to change the subject, "here's something much more interesting, anyway. A letter from the Company. Looks official and important."

Frank took the letter, opened it and gazed at it in some dismay. "I should think so," he exclaimed. "An assessment of $15,000 on my stock."

"Fifteen thousand devils!"

"No; fifteen thousand dollars."

The Colonel took the letter from his hand and looked at it with worried eyes. "And you've got to meet it, Frank, or lose what you've put in."

Miss Alathea went to her nephew anxiously. "You'll sell Queen Bess, now, won't you?" she implored. "You could pay it then. Best sell her."

The young man stood there, deep in worried thought. "If I were quite convinced of the Company's good faith in everything, I'd risk it all, even the loss of Woodlawn, my old home," he answered.

Neb now appeared from around a corner of the stable, evidently having decided that the girl had had enough time for her toilet, or afraid to wait another minute. His appearance created a diversion.

"Here, Neb," said Frank, "we've had enough nonsense. Let's see Queen Bess, now."

Neb looked anxiously for signs that Madge was ready to see visitors, he listened at the door. He saw no sign, he heard no signal. He was scared, but he was faithful to his promise to the girl. He planted his old back against the door. "Now de trouble am commencin'!" he assured himself.

Holton looked at him with a sour smile. "I hope," he said to Frank, "that you'll have better luck nor me. Neb wouldn't open that door for me."

"Dem was yo' ohduhs, suh," said Neb, appealing to his master.

"An' he was powerful sassy in the bargain," Holton went on, full of malice, hoping to make Neb suffer for defying him.

Layson, however, much as he was now annoyed by the old darky's hesitation about opening the stable door for him, himself, did not propose to chide him for having kept his trust and held it closed to others. "You mustn't mind Neb," he said to Holton. "He's a privileged character around here. I had told him to admit no one, and, as usual, he obeyed my orders blindly."

"Yes, suh," Neb declared, delighted, "went it blind, suh."

"His obedience," his master went on boastingly, "is really phenomenal. He wouldn't open that door for anybody. He'd guard the key with his own life." He turned to Neb. "Wouldn't you, now, Neb?"

Neb was disconcerted. It was true enough that from most people he certainly would have guarded that key with his life. But at that moment there was one within the stable from whom he had not guarded it. "Yes—yessah!" he said hesitantly. And as he said it he would have given anything he had if he could have laid his hands upon that self-same key.

Frank smiled at him. "But I suppose you'll let me have a look at her."

"Yes—yessuh—in a—in a minute, suh."

Layson was annoyed. "Why not at once?" He was beginning to be frightened. Could something Neb was trying to hide have happened to the mare?

"Bekase—bekase—" Ned stammered, "well, to tell de trufe, suh, bekase I is afeared she ain't quite dressed."

"Not dressed! The mare not dressed! Have you lost your senses? Open that door—quick!"

"Marse Frank, I cain't. I nachully jus' cain't."

Holton was enjoying this. "You see," he said, "he won't open it for nobody. Not even for th' man as owns it an' th' mare behind it."

"Give me the key!" said Frank.

"De key—de key—" Neb stammered.

"I said the key!"

The old negro advanced pitifully. "Fo' de lawd, Marse Frank, I hasn't got it!"

"He'd guard it with his life!" said Holton, with deep sarcasm.

"Where is it?" Frank demanded.

"In dar," said Neb, and pointed to the stable.

Layson, astonished and annoyed beyond the power of words by the old negro's strange performance, fearful of the safety of his mare, entirely puzzled, sprang toward the stable window and was about to pull himself up by the ledge so that he might look in.

Neb seized him and pulled him from the aperture with a desperate agility which strained his aged limbs. "Fo' de Lawd's sake, now, Marse Frank," he cried, "don't yo' dare look t'rough dat stable winder!"

Frank, now, was badly frightened. "Is there some one in there with Queen Bess?" he asked.

"A young pusson to see you, suh," Neb admitted.

"And you let that person have the key?"

"No, suh; it were taken from me."

Layson was in panic. "Heaven knows," he exclaimed, "what can have happened here!" He rushed to the stable door and pounded on it with his fists. "Open at once, or I'll break in the door," he cried.

Neb, now, had gone up to the window and looked through it with desperate glance. What he saw was reassuring. He turned back toward his master smiling. "Hol' on, Marse Frank, de young pusson am a-comin' out," he said.

"Well," said Layson, threateningly, "I'm ready for him." He braced himself to spring upon some malefactor.

The door opened and Madge appeared before their astonished eyes, garbed in a gown which she had fashioned after that which Barbara had worn up in the hills.

"Madge!" cried Frank, amazed.

The Colonel, laughing, approached the girl with outstretched hand; Neb, relieved, dived through the stable door; Miss Alathea, who had been under a great strain while the dramatic little scene had been in progress, dropped limply on Neb's bench.

Madge, with a retentive memory of the way Miss "Barbarous" had greeted her back in the mountains, stepped toward that much-astonished maiden, opened her red parasol straight in her face, and courtesied to the rest.

"Howdy, folks; howdy!" she said, happily.



CHAPTER XIII

The party stood, nonplussed. Frank was first to show signs of recovery, and, after a moment of completely dazed astonishment, advanced to Madge with hand outstretched. Her appearance, astonishing as it had been, had been as great a relief as he had ever known in all his life. Neb's worry and insubordination had filled him with the keenest apprehension. But he had no doubts of Madge. If she had been there with the mare, the mare was certainly all right, no matter how puzzling the affair might seem to be upon its surface.

"Why, little one, this is, indeed, a great surprise and pleasure!" he exclaimed, with sincere gallantry.

Madge looked at him with doubtful eyes, from which the doubt, however, was fast clearing. "Oh, say; are you-uns r'ally glad to see me?"

"No one could be more welcome," he assured her, and the honest pleasure in his eyes convinced her that he did not speak for mere politeness' sake.

And now Miss Alathea, recovering from the shock of all that had preceded the girl's unexpected appearance, went to her cordially. "We are more than glad, my child," she told her.

"Glad's no name for it," the gallant Colonel said, advancing in his turn.

There could be no doubt of the sincerity of any one who, thus far, had expressed a welcome for her; but the voice which now came coldly from Miss Barbara was less convincing. She did not approach the mountain girl, but sat somewhat superciliously upon a bench and spoke frigidly. "It is an unexpected pleasure."

Madge, not trained to hide her feelings under softened words, turned on her angrily. "Humph! I wasn't askin' you," she said. Then, to the others: "I didn't know but what my droppin' in, permiskus like—"

"A Kentuckian's friends," said Frank, "are always welcome."

"Friends from the word go, remember," said the Colonel.

"Thankee, Colonel," said the girl. "We'll have that race, some day; but I won't ride agin you if you ride Queen Bess. Oh, wouldn't I like to see her go!"

"So you shall," said Frank. "Neb, is she ready?"

"Yessuh; all saddled, sur, an' bridled."

"Oh, let me bring her out," cried Madge. "I'd love to."

"Lawsy, honey," said the negro, "you couldn't bring her out. She's dat fretful an' dat nervous dat she'd kill yo', suah."

"Get out, Neb!" Madge cried, scornfully. "I ain't afeard of her. Wild things allays has made friends with me. I've never seen a horse so skeery that I couldn't manage him—couldn't make him foller me."

She pushed the hesitating Neb out of her path and went into the stable.

Layson, who was for the moment, at a distance, had not heard all her talk with Neb, but saw her as she went into the stall where none but he, himself, and Neb, dared go, and it was stable talk that, soon or late, Queen Bess would prove to be a man killer!

"Neb, stop her! She'll be killed!" he cried.

Neb ran, as fast as his old legs would carry him, into the stable; Frank hurried to the stable door.

"Madge! Madge!" he cried, and then: "Why—look! The mare is following her as might a kitten!"

He stepped aside and Madge came from the stable with Queen Bess behind her, ears pricked forward eagerly as she kept her eyes on Madge's pursed up, cooing lips, head dropped, neck stretched in graceful fashion, lifting her dainty feet as proudly as ever did the queen whom she was named for.

"Come on, you beauty!" the girl cried. "Oh, it would be like heaven to ride you; and I could do it, too!"

"Take her to the track, Neb," Layson ordered. "I'll follow and give her her exercise."

Madge, unable to resist the impulse which was thrilling her with longing, motioned Neb away as he approached to take the mare. "Go 'way! Go 'way!" she said. Then, to the mare: "Come on, you dear, come on." She went on slowly, while the mare, in calm docility, trailed after her. The spectators, who knew the beast, gazed spellbound.

Constantly the girl's pleased eyes were on the beautiful creature following. Never had she seen so perfect an animal; never had she known one giving such plain signs of high intelligence. The mare's big eyes, broad forehead, delicate muzzle, arching neck, strong withers, mighty flanks, and slender ankles marked her, to the veriest novice, a thoroughbred of thoroughbreds; her docile and obedient march showed what seemed like an almost magic power in the delighted mountain maid. Every drop of blood in the girl's body tingled with excitement, all her muscles thrilled with mad desire to mount the wondrous beast and be away as on the wind's wings. She could imagine what the mare's long strides would be, she could imagine how exhilerating she would find the steady, perfect motion of the mighty back.

"Oh, I can't stand it!" she exclaimed, at length. "I've got to do it!"

She paused, and eagerly the mare stepped up to her, nuzzleing her caressing hand. Then, with a bound, the girl was on the graceful creature's back, landing in her place as lightly as a wind-blown thistle-down, as gracefully as a fairy horsewoman.

"Heavens!" cried Barbara. "She's on Queen Bess!"

"She'll be killed!" Miss Alathea screamed, in terror.

The Colonel, only, recognized her instantly as a born horsewoman. His expert eye observed with rare delight the ease with which she mounted, the perfect poise with which she found her seat, the absolute adjustment of her lithe young motions to the movements of the mare beneath her from the very moment she had reached her back.

"No danger; she rides like a centaur."

With the others he had stopped, with eyes for nothing but the girl before them and the splendid animal she rode. "Ah, what a jockey she would make!"

Barbara liked this exhibition of the mountain girl's abilities no better than she had liked anything which Madge had done. Her lip curled somewhat scornfully. "What a pity that her sex should bar her from that vocation!" she said coldly.

She turned to Frank, who was watching Madge with startled eyes, worried as to the result of this mad prank on both the girl and mare.

"Frank," said Barbara, "what a figure she will make to-night at your lawn-party! How your friends will laugh at her!"

Layson cast a quick, sharp glance at her. She was not advancing her own cause by trying, thus, to ridicule the mountain maiden. "I'll run the risk," he said. "She is my guest, you know, and, as such, will surely be given every consideration and courtesy by all."

"Oh, certainly," said Barbara, seeing that she had gone, perhaps, too far. "If you wish it. I should be glad to please you, once again."

"Nothing could please me more than to have you show her what kindnesses you can. I know she will feel strange and worried."

Madge, sitting Queen Bess with an ease and grace which that intelligent mare had never found in any other rider, and, now, far from them at the other end of the great training-field, absorbed the youth's delighted glances.

"Can't you forget her for an instant?" exclaimed Barbara. "You haven't been at all the same since you came back from the mountains! Once we were always together. Now I never see you unless I come over here; and no matter what I do, you don't seem to care."

Layson was uneasy. He had been aware, for a long time, that, sooner or later, a complete understanding of his changed feelings toward this girl, must, in some way, be accomplished. Now seemed a good time for it, yet he hesitated at the thought of it. But the thing had to be gone through with. "I know I used to play the tyrant, Barbara; but it wasn't a pleasant role, and I was always half-ashamed of it."

The girl flared into a passion. "What do you mean?"

"Barbara, I have had no right to go so far, no right to ask so much of you. From the bottom of my heart I beg forgiveness. Let us forget it all and just be friends again." And, even as he spoke, his eyes were wandering toward the girl whom Queen Bess had so utterly surrendered to. The mare, known since she had first been saddled, as a terror to all riders, was carrying her as gently as the veriest country hack had ever borne an old lady from the farm to market.

Barbara saw where his attention was, and resentment thrilled her. "Friends? Never! Frank Layson, I believe I hate you!"

"Oh, very well," said he, plainly not too much impressed, "if you want to be unreasonable, why, of course—"

The girl was frightened at the length to which she had permitted her ill-temper to carry her. "Oh, no, Frank," she hastily corrected, "I didn't mean that. Of course I am your friend."

"Thank you, Barbara," said he, with a calmness which was maddening to her. "I am sure we understand each other, now." And then, still further maddening her: "I must go now, and look after Madge and dear Queen Bess. I never should forgive myself if anything should happen to the girl. But nothing will. See how splendidly she rides!"

The girl upon the horse, as if conscious of his anxiety about her, now turned her mount back toward the field-end where the onlookers were loosely grouped and came toward them at a slow and gentle canter—a gait which none had ever seen Queen Bess take before, when a stranger was upon her back. She leaped from the mare by Layson's side, and Neb, ever anxious for the welfare of his equine darling, began work without delay at rubbing Queen Bess down.

"Reckon you'll never forgive me," Madge apologized to Layson, "but I just couldn't help it. Never even saw a mare like her, afore. My pony's no-whar alongside of her. I felt like an angel sittin' on a cloud an' sailin' straight to heaven!" She turned and petted the black beauty. "Oh, you darling!"

"Got to take her in, now," Neb said, preparing to lead the mare away. He spoke apologetically as if the girl had rights which, now, should be consulted. He had never made a like concession in the past to anyone except his master.

"Go 'way, go 'way," said Madge, taking the reins from his black hand. "Ain't no use o' leadin' her—you jest watch her foller me!"

She looped the reins about the mare's arched neck, started off, and, without so much as flicking her long tail, Queen Bess fell in behind, obedient to her cooing, murmurous calls.

Frank laughed. "If," he said to the whole party, "you wish to have a look at the mare's quarters, I think Neb will now admit us."

All but the Colonel started toward the stable, but he hesitated, looking toward Miss Alathea. While the others had been spellbound by the girl and horse, he, the most enthusiastic horseman of them all, had been divided in attention between them and the lady whose notice he attracted, now, by means of sundry hems and haws.

"Miss 'Lethe, just a moment," he said softly. She paused and then went up to him. He held out a newspaper, suddenly at a loss for words, now that there was a prospect of a moment with her wholly uninterrupted. "Here," said he, a little panicky, "is a full account of the revival, sermon and all. Make your hair stand on end to read it."

She took the paper, undeceived by his small subterfuge to gain attention, but interested, as she always was in such things, in the account of the revival. "This really is interesting." She sat down on the bench, as they reached the stable-yard again, and pored above the newspaper.

In the meantime the Colonel tried to screw his courage to the sticking point. "Colonel Sandusky Doolittle," he adjured himself, "if you don't say it now, then you forever hold your peace, that's all!" He went to his buggy, which had been brought to the stable yard, and from underneath its seat took a box containing a bouquet of sweet, old-fashioned flowers. Miss Alathea, absorbed in the account of the revival, did not notice him at all. "This will do the business," he reflected. "Now, Sandusky Doolittle, keep cool, keep cool!" Nervously, as he gazed at her, his fingers worked among the flowers, dismembering them unconsciously. "A Kentucky Colonel," he was saying to himself in scorn, "afraid of a woman!" His fingers tore the flowers with new activity as his nervousness increased, making sad work with the magnificent bouquet. "Of course she is an angel," he reflected, and then, with a grim humor, "or will be before I ask her, if I wait another twenty years! But I shall ask her, I shall ask her!" He stepped toward her boldly, but paused before her in a wordless panic when he had approached within a yard. "Heavens!" he thought. "My heart is going at a one-forty gait and the jockey's lost the reins. I'll be over the fence in another minute if I don't hold tight! But I have got to do it, this time." He dropped the stems of the flowers, still bound together by their lengths of wide white ribbon, into the elaborate box from which, so lately, he had taken them in their uninjured beauty, not noting the sad wreck which his too nervous fingers had produced, put on the cover and approached still nearer. With the box held toward her bashfully, he managed, then, another step or two. "Miss 'Lethe," he said stammering, "lawn party to-night—bouquet for you—brought it from Lexington—for you—for you, you know."

The Colonel never was embarrassed save when he was endeavoring to propose marriage to Miss Alathea and he always was embarrassed then. She recognized the situation from the mere tone of his voice and looked up hopefully.

"Oh, Colonel, how kind!" said she, as she held delighted hands out for the box. "I know it is beautiful."

"It was quite the best I could do, Miss 'Lethe," said the Colonel.

"You have such splendid taste! I'm sure it's lovely." She opened the box and looked, expectantly, within. "Why, Colonel," she cried, disappointed, "where are—where are the flowers?"

"Why—why—why," he stammered, and then saw the mutilated blossoms on the ground around him. "Why, I don't know—don't know," said he. "'Don't ask me."

She was rummaging among the stems, nonplussed. "Why, here's a note!" she said.

"Thank heaven!" the Colonel thought, "the note's there yet!" Then, growing bold: "Miss 'Lethe, if you've a kindly feeling for me in your heart, read that note; but don't you get excited; keep cool, keep cool!"

"Why, certainly," said she. "I see no cause for excitement." She unfolded the note and read, aloud, and very slowly, for the Colonel's hand was not too easy to decipher. "'My dear, dear Miss 'Lethe: Woman without her man is a savage.'" She looked up, naturally astonished by this unusual statement. "Why, Colonel," she exclaimed, "what can you mean by saying woman is a savage without her man?"

He stood appalled for just a second and then realized the error into which his ardor had misled him. "Great Scott!" he cried. "I forgot to put in the commas! It ought to read this way: 'Woman, without her, man is a savage.' Go on, Miss 'Lethe, please go on."

She read again: "'I feel that it is time for me to become civilized—in other words, to come in out of the wet. To me you have been, for twenty years, the embodiment of woman's truth, purity and goodness. But constitutional timidity and chronic financial depression, due to the race-track, have hitherto kept me silent.'" Miss 'Lethe looked up at him with a strange expression on her face. "Colonel," she exclaimed, "what does this mean?"

"Go on, Miss 'Lethe," was the answer, "please go on, go on." He made a mighty effort to secure control of his unruly nerves, and, almost unconsciously, while her head was bent above the note, took a small flask from his pocket and imbibed from it. It steadied him.

She read again: "'I am convinced that my interest in the company will yield me a competence; accordingly, behold me at your feet!'"

Miss 'Lethe looked down somewhat mischievously. She did not see the Colonel where his note declared he would be. She glanced again at the paper in her hands and saw a word which, at first, had quite escaped attention. "'Metaphorically,'" she read, and then the signature: "'Colonel Sandusky Doolittle.'"

"Colonel!" she exclaimed.

"Miss 'Lethe," he replied, and, discovering that the flask was still in plain view in his hand, slipped it into his sidepocket upside down.

"Colonel, put that bottle right side up and listen to me," she said calmly. "Do you really love me?"

"Do I love you? With a fervor—er—a—passion—er—will you excuse me if I smoke?" He took a black cigar from his vest pocket, in another effort to control his nerves, and lighted it as might an automatic smoker.

"I am going to put you to the proof," said she. "Could you, for my sake, come down from ten cigars a day to five?"

The Colonel was dismayed. "To five cigars a day! Impossible!" He caught himself. That scarcely was the way to answer the request of the woman he adored so fervently. "I mean," he hastily corrected, "is—is that all?" He made a motion as if to throw away the weed he had just lighted, but thought better of it. "I will make the descent to-morrow," he said earnestly.

"Could you restrict yourself to three mint-julips, daily?"

"Three! A man couldn't live on three! He'd have to—have to take such poisons as—as cold water into his system."

"Remember, Colonel, I would mix them."

"That settles it! Three goes!" He fervently reached toward her, plainly planning to embrace her.

"Wait, Colonel," she exclaimed, "there is one more condition. Could you, for my sake, promise never to enter another race-track?"

He started back from her in horror. "Never enter another race-tack! I, Colonel Sandusky Doolittle, known everywhere, from Maine to California, as a plunger, give up the absorbing passion of my life!"

"Remember what you said to Frank," said she. "'It's a delusion and a snare.' But, of course, if you think more of a delusion than you do of me—"

"No; hang it!" cried the Colonel, "I think more of you. Twenty years—the longest race on record and a win in sight! I'll not lose by a balk at the finish! I promise you, Miss 'Lethe, on the honor of a Kentuckian."

"Then, Colonel, I must confess, I have loved you, also, for every one of those long twenty years."

"Twenty years!" He turned his head aside and muttered: "What a damned fool I have been!" Then, to her, he said, exultantly: "Aha! A neck ahead!"

It is difficult to say what would have happened, then, if Madge, Holton, Barbara and Frank had not come from the stable, chattering about Queen Bess.



CHAPTER XIV

Joe Lorey, mad with wrath, his heart filled with the lust of killing for revenge, infuriated to the point where he felt need of neither food nor sleep, yet made less rapid time down the rough mountain paths than had the girl. Love-lent wings are swifter than an impulse born of hatred and resentment can be. She had flown upon such wings to save the man who filled her innocent thoughts with longing; Joe had gone clumsily, despite his cunning as a mountaineer, for leaden, murderous thoughts had weighed him down, hampering the quickness of his wit, delaying his fleet feet, confusing the alertness of his watchfulness for faint-limned trails, loose areas perilous of slides upon steep slopes. Indeed, though hate had driven him, Joe Lorey never in his life had made so very slow a journey to the bluegrass as that which he had started on from his wrecked still, with hatred of Frank Layson, who he thought had viciously betrayed him, blazing in his heart.

Hours after the light-footed girl, spurred by her fear for one whom she but dimly guessed that she had learned to love, had arrived at the bluegrass mansion and been welcomed by the owner of Queen Bess, the mountaineer reached the confines of the splendid farm, and lurked there, waiting for night-fall to make his entrance into the house grounds safe.

The rough youth's mental state was pitiable. Tragedy had pursued him, almost from his life's beginning, he reflected, as he furtively awaited opportunity for the revenge which he had planned. The fierce feud of the mountains had robbed him of his parents, and, with them, of the best years of his youth; the rough life of the mountains had robbed his strong young manhood of those opportunities which, he dimly realized, might have made him different and better; when love for sweet Madge Brierly had come to him, Fate had brought up from the bluegrass the young stranger, who, with his superior learning, polished manner and smooth speech, had found the conquest of the girl (Joe bitterly reflected) all too easy; and finally had come the crowning, black disaster—the betrayal of his still to the agents of the government, its destruction and his transformation from a free man of the mountains into a furtive outlaw.

He could not see that life held anything but gloom for him—black, impenetrable, ever thickening. He had but one thing left to live for—a revenge as dark as were the wrongs which he had suffered.

He knew that government agents have shrewd wits, keen eyes, strong arms, and never let a moonshiner escape if, through any strategy, they may bring about his capture; he knew that since the discovery and destruction of his still he was a marked man; so it was nearing dusk when, after intensely cautious and immensely skilful manoeuvering against discovery, he actually entered the Layson grounds.

The long, exciting afternoon, full of Queen Bess, a certain sense of triumph over Barbara Holton, the extent of which she could not guess, countless thrills of gratitude and exultation born of the kindness and consideration shown her by Miss Alathea and the Colonel, had sped away before Madge realized that it had been half-spent. Now, though, the deepening twilight warned her of the flight of time and told her that she must, perforce, perform the task for which she had descended from the mountains.

All the others except Frank had drifted toward the house, and she had hung behind for the express purpose of getting private speech with him, when she had the day's first opportunity.

"Mr. Frank," said she, "afore we go into th' house I got a word to say to you as I don't want nobody but you to hear."

A quick glance at her face showed him that what she had to say was, really, of great importance, for her lovely mouth was serious, her deep eyes were full of worry, her smooth brow was nearer to real frowning than he had ever seen it.

"Why, Madge, what is the matter?"

She put her hand upon his arm, turning her sweet face up to him with a revelation of solicitude which, had she known how plain it was, she would have hidden at all hazard. "It may mean life or death to you," she told him solemnly.

"Life or death to me, little girl? What are you talking of?" said he, almost incredulous.

"Joe Lorey's still were raided by the revenuers after you come down!"

"It can't be possible!"

"It is. It lies in ruins and in ashes an' he is hidin' out among th' mountings, somewhars, in danger, ev'ry minute, of arrest an', then, of prison. 'Twas all he had in th' wide world."

"Poor fellow! I am sorry," said Layson, with quick sympathy. "I'll see what can be done. And you say he's hiding out up in the mountains?"

She hesitated. "I said so, but I reckon it ain't true, exactly. It was that that made me hurry down to speak to you. Some say as how he has come down into th' bluegrass to find th' man as gin th' word. It is a crime as never is forgiven in th' mountings."

As she spoke, unseen, behind them, a dark, slouching, furtive figure slipped across an open space and took a crouching stand behind a tree near by. Had they listened without speech they might have heard the heavy breathing of the very man of whom they spoke, might have heard the sharp click of the lock of his long rifle as he brought its hammer to full cock. Had they turned about they might have seen the blue glint of the day's last light upon that rifle's barrel, which was levelled straight at Layson's heart. But they saw none of these things nor heard a sound.

"Who does he think betrayed him?" Layson asked, with deep interest, but no trace of guilty knowledge, thrilling in his voice.

Madge hesitated. Then she blurted out the truth. "Who?" she repeated, "Why—why you! YOU—YOU!"

The rifle barrel steadied to its mark, the finger curled to press upon the trigger.

"Why, Madge," said Layson, earnestly, "I didn't even know he had a still! I swear it!"

There was an honest ring in the youth's voice which could not be mistaken.

"I knowed it warn't your doin'," the girl said with a great sigh of relief.

And as she spoke the rifle barrel slowly fell.

"I knowed it warn't your doin', but Joe'll never believe it. Night an' day you'll have to be close on your guard. There's no tellin' what minute your life may be in danger."

"I don't believe it of Joe Lorey," Layson answered earnestly. "We fought, and he fought fair."

After they had gone, Joe crept out from his hiding place among the shrubbery and looked after them with puzzled, pain-filled eyes, like a great animal's.

"If they'd only knowed that I war standin' in th' shadder there!" he mused. "If he hadn't spoke them words I'd pulled th' trigger, but he spoke up like as ef 't war true an' I jest couldn't do it."

A cautious footstep on the close-knit sward, which would have been inaudible to any ear less keen than his, attracted his attention, suddenly, and he slipped back to his leafy hiding-place. Peering from the covert he saw Holton coming. The man was furtive, apprehensive in his every movement, suspicion breeding. When Joe stepped out from his thicket boldly, to confront him, the ex-slave-dealer fell back, frightened.

"Hello, sir," was Joe's laconic greeting.

"Joe Lorey!" exclaimed Holton.

"That's me," Joe boldly granted. He peered at him so closely that Holton shrank away from him, involuntarily. "And you—why you're the man as gin th' word that Frank Layson had warned th' revenooers of my still."

"I told ye for yer good," said Holton, clearly recognizing that his position was unfortunate. "An' recollect you promised not to tell anyone my name."

Joe nodded gravely. "While I believe ye told th' truth I'll keep my word," he answered. "But I wants to tell you that I heered Frank Layson deny it, hyar, to-night, an' it sounded like he war speakin' th' plain truth. See hyar, sir, you nearly egged me on to doin' murder." He reached forward and seized Holton by the shoulder roughly, with a grasp so powerful that the old man, though he was of sturdy frame and mighty muscle, knew that he was helpless in the grip. "Now look me in th' face. Tell me as you vally your own life—war it truth or lies, you told me?"

"It war th' truth," said Holton, doggedly; "th' truth an' nothin' else."

Joe shook his head incredulously. "I'd like better proof nor your word, stranger, for, some way, your voice it don't ring true, nor yer eye look honest."

"I'll gin ye th' proof," said Holton desperately. "Ye know that I war never near yer still. Layson told me it war in th' wall of a ravine—Hangin' Rock Ravine—an' a big oak stood in front of it an' hid the mouth o' th' cave. Thar, do ye believe me, now?"

Joe nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. "No man as lived up in th' mountings would have told ye." He considered ponderously for a moment. "Yes, I reckon that I'll have to take yer word. 'T was him as done it."

"Of course it war," said Holton, and then, perhaps, a bit too eagerly: "an' you'll make him pay for it?"

"Yes," said Joe, "but I've another score to settle, first, another man to find—Lem Lindsay."

Holton was plainly startled, although Joe could not guess just why he should be. "Lem Lindsay!" he exclaimed.

"Yes; the man as murdered my father. I've had word of him, at last. I've heard as how he war seen, years ago, in New Orleans—he war a nigger-trader, then—an' that he's come up in th' bluegrass country, since, like enough under another name." He looked at Holton eagerly. "I say, sir, you don't know a man like that, do you?"

Holton spoke a little hurriedly. "No, no; there ain't no man like that in these parts."

"It don't make no differ whar he bides," said Joe. "Soon or late our paths'll cross an' bring us face to face. When he struck down my father it war sealed and signed above that he war to fall by my hand; an' there's a feelin' in my heart that that hour air drawin' nigh." He nodded and then turned away. "Good-night, stranger."

Holton was thoroughly alarmed. Many things distressed him. He could plainly see that his daughter's love-affair with Layson had gone wrong, he realized that there was little chance that he could buy Madge Brierly's coal lands at anything but a fair value, and now—to fall by his hand!

"I'll make that false," he muttered, "Why, I've got to do it!"

He moved away among the trees, but stopped in frequent thought as he progressed.

"They'll lay the crime on Lorey," he reflected, after he had laid his plan. "They'll hunt him down and lynch him and I shall be safe. Layson'll be ruined, he'll have to sell Woodlawn, and my gal'll be th' missus there, in spite of him. I've got to do it."

Like a shadow of the night he hurried through the grounds until he reached the stable where Queen Bess was thought to be secure.

"Every window barred, every door is sealed but this!" he cunningly reflected as he paused at the front entrance.

With frantic haste, lest he should be discovered at the work, he piled brush from a near refuse pile against the door and stuffed wisps of grass and hay into the bottom of the heap. Into this tinder pile he thrust a lighted match and disappeared, just as Madge came to the bench where she had paused when she first came to Woodlawn, early in the afternoon.

It was plain enough, from her dejected looks and listless attitude, that the dance had given her no pleasure, but, on the contrary, had filled her with distress.

"I couldn't stand it thar, no longer," she was thinking, bitterly. "I war jest a curiosity, like a wild woman. Miss Barbarous poked fun at me till I war plumb afraid I'd fly at her like a wild-cat, so I jest slipped away. Oh, I see, now, as I never seed afore; the differ that there is 'twixt Mr. Frank an' me! An' I know, now, what 't is air ailin' me. I loves him. Oh, I loves him better nor my life! But it can't never be." She dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. "Good-bye, good, kind, Mr. Frank, good-bye!" She stretched her arms out toward the mansion she had lately left, where lights were twinkling gaily, whence sounds of music now came faintly to her ears. "You'll soon forget the little mounting girl. You'll never know she loved you. I'm goin' back—back to the old mountings."

As she rose an ominous crackling caught her ear and held her at attention, then, in a horrid flash, the fire blazed out among the hay and brush which Holton had piled up against the stable door.

"Oh, oh!" she cried. "Th' stable is burnin'! Fire! Fire! Fire! Neb, are you in there? Don't you hear me, Neb? Th' stable air on fire!"

Neb's voice came from the dim interior, muffled and skeptical. "What dat?" he said. "Don't want no foolishness 'round heah. I's ahmed."

"It's me, Neb, me," she cried. "Th' stable 's burnin', Neb!"

"Gorramighty!" she heard Neb exclaim, now in a voice expressive of great fright. "Dat's so, dat's so! Quick, honey, open up de doah!"

Madge was working at the biggest log which Holton had thrust against the door to feed the blaze. The flames and smoke surged 'round her as she struggled with the unwieldy thing, her hands grasped, more than once, live coals, without making her release her hold. Once or twice the bursting flames, swung hither and swung yon by the light, vagrant breezes of the night and the drafts born of the fire, itself, flared straight toward her face, and, to save her hair, which, once igniting, would, she knew, make further work impossible, she had to draw back for a second; but each time, as she saw another chance, she sprang again to the desperate task. At last, after a dozen efforts, she had thrust the blazing log so far from the already burning door that Neb could push it open. He stumbled out, his old hands held before him, gropingly, half-suffocated.

"Neb, you ain't hurt," said she.

"You go ring dat bell," said he, pointing to a standard bearing at its top an ornamental iron crotch in which a big plantation bell was swung. "Soon's I get my bref from all dat smoke I'll go back an' git Queen Bess."

The girl sprang to the rope and soon the bell was ringing out a wild alarm.

"Hurry, Neb!" she cried. "Oh, hurry! Th' fire's a-gainin', ev'ry second! Hurry!"

Neb dashed back into the stable upon trembling limbs, while, without a pause, the girl kept up the clangor of alarm. Her eyes were ever on the door through which the faithful black had disappeared, watching anxiously to see him come out with the mare.

But second after second—seconds which seemed to her like hours—went by and he did not appear again. Her heart began to beat with frantic fears that Neb, himself, as well as the superb animal which she had already learned to love, had fallen victim to the fire, when, at last, he stumbled from the door.

"'Tain't no use," he said, as he weakly staggered up to her. "It kain't be done. Queen Bess am crazy wid de fiah. She jes' won't come out! I cain't git huh to come out." He sobbed. "An' she am all dat Marse Frank hab on earth!" Beside himself he ran off toward the house, shouting for his master wildly.

"All he has on earth!" the girl exclaimed, the bell-rope falling from relaxing hands. An instant she stood there in thought, horrified at the idea of the catastrophe which threatened Layson. Then: "I'll save her! She will follow me!"

Without a second's hesitation, with no thought for her own safety, she drew her skirts about her tightly, wrapped her shawl around her head to save her hair and dashed through the growing flames about the stable-door, into the inferno which now raged within the structure, just as Neb, running with a lurching step, but with a speed remarkable in one so old and stiffened by rheumatic pains, dashed back to the scene of the disaster, in advance of Frank, the Colonel, Holton, Miss Alathea and the other inmates of the house, guests, servants, all.



Without a word, as he approached, Frank pulled off his coat, evidently preparing for a desperate dash through the now roaring flames to rescue his beloved mare. Then, bracing himself for a great spring through the lurid barrier, he cried, "I'll save her!" and would have leaped into the flaming entrance if Neb had not caught his arm with desperate grip.

"No, honey," the old negro cried, "yo' shan't go in!"

The Colonel joined the negro in restraining the half-crazed owner of Queen Bess. "It's no use, Frank," said he. "We'll not let you go in."

They dragged the struggling youth back from the fire just as, to their amazement, an exultant voice rang from the inside of the burning building. "Back! Back!" it cried. "I'm a-comin' with Queen Bess!"

An instant later Madge sprang out through the flames, followed by the mare, about whose head the mountain girl had wrapped her shawl.

"Come, girl! Come, girl!" said Madge, alert of eye, cool-witted, soothing.

As docilely as she had followed her that afternoon, the mare stepped through the blazing door and out into the stable-yard.



CHAPTER XV

Lexington was in a wild state of excitement on the morning of the year's great race, the Ashland Oaks. In a private parlor of the Phoenix Hotel the two men who were, perhaps, most deeply interested of all in it, were weary of their speculations after they had gone, for the thousandth time, over every detail of possible prophecy and speculation. The Colonel sat beside a table upon which stood a "long" glass from which protruded, and in which nestled fragrant mint-leaves. At the bottom of the glass there lingered, yet, the good third of a julep.

"There's one capital thing about a mint-julep," he said comfortably, and smacked appreciative lips. "One always suggests another." He drained his glass and rose. At the other side of the room was the bell-button. His finger was extended and about to touch it when he stopped to think. "No! Great heavens!" said he. "That makes my third, already, and I'm as dry as the desert of Sahara." He sat down again, an air of martyrdom upon his face. "Ah, well, Miss 'Lethe's worth it. I say, Frank, anything new in the extra?"

The youthful owner of Queen Bess, to whom it seemed as if almost life itself were staked on the result of the coming contest at the track, lowered, with a nervous hand, for an instant only, the newspaper he had been poring over.

"Only this," he said, and slowly read: "'Queen Bess is still the favorite for the Ashland Oaks. The report that she was injured in the fire by which her stable was burned, proves to be a canard. Her owner declares her to be unhurt and in fine condition.'"

The Colonel nodded his approval. "That's what I've telegraphed the Dyer brothers. I'm sure they won't refuse to take her when they know the facts in the case. It was a close shave, though. If it hadn't been for that little thoroughbred from the mountains—"

"When she rushed into the flames, last night, wasn't she magnificent!" said Frank, flushing with enthusiasm. "And when she came out, leading Queen Bess to safety, she looked like an angel!"

The Colonel coughed in deprecation. "The simile's off, a little bit, ain't it? Angels are not supposed to come out of the flames."

"At least, Colonel, you'll admit that she's the best and bravest little girl you ever knew."

The Colonel smiled. "Yes; but, my boy, this enthusiasm is alarming." He laughed outright. "It seems to indicate another conflagration, with Cupid as the incendiary."

The youth colored. "Oh, nonsense!"

"Be more careful, Frank," his friend urged, becoming serious. "She's a dear, simple little thing, not used to the ways of the world. Don't let her get too fond of you."

"What do you mean?"

"See here, my boy. I know you young fellows don't want an old fool, like me, interfering with your affairs, but I've taken that little girl right to my heart. I tell you, Frank, she's too brave and true to be trifled with. She's not that kind."

Layson flushed hotly. The intimation, even from the Colonel, was more than he could bear with patience. "Stop!" he cried. "You've said enough. What you mean to insinuate is false!"

The Colonel rose, embarrassed. The youth's earnestness astonished him. Could it be possible that this scion of an ancient bluegrass family, this leader of the younger set in one of the most exclusive circles in Kentucky, could really be thinking seriously of that untutored mountain-girl? "My boy, forgive me!" he exclaimed. "I—I didn't understand. I never dreamed there could be anything—er—serious. I thought, of course—"

Frank paced the floor with nervous tread. Other things than the impending contest for the Ashland Oaks had been worrying him of late. Since he had left the mountains there had scarcely been a moment, waking or sleeping, when the face of the sweet mountain girl who had fascinated him among her rocks and forests, and had come down to the bluegrass to save not only his life but the life of his beloved mare, had not been vividly before him. Untutored she might be, uncouth of speech, unlearned in all those things, in fact, which the women he had known had ever held most valuable, but her compensating virtues had begun to take upon themselves their actual values—values so overwhelming in their magnitude that her few lackings grew to seem continually less important in his mind.

"Never mind, Colonel," he said slowly, "you can't say anything to me but what I've said, over and over again, to myself. I know she's ignorant and uncultured. I know what it would mean if I should marry her. If I were to choose for a wife a fashionable girl, whose life is centered in the luxury which surrounds her, the world would smile approval; but for Madge, with her true, brave heart and noble thoughts, there would be only sneers and insults because she happened to be born up there in the mountains. That is the kind of people we are down here in the bluegrass." He smiled, somewhat bitterly. "And I—well, I'm too much like the rest to need any warning—too much of a coward to think of making her my wife."

He sat, dejectedly, in a chair by the long table, and, with face held between his hands and elbows planted on the board, looked across it, through the open window, out into the thronging street with gloomy eyes. For days he had been fighting battle after battle with himself. He could not make his mind up as to what he ought to do. He knew he loved the mountain-girl, but—but—

"There, there, my boy, I'm sorry," said the Colonel, sympathetically, apologetically. "Let's drop the subject. The ladies will be here, soon. Before they come I'll step over to the office and get the answer from the Dyer Brothers." He rose, looking at his watch. "It's nearly time it was here. They were to wire promptly. I'll bring it to you as soon as it comes." He went to Frank and put his hand upon his shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry, my boy. It will all come out, all right. Ahem! I mean there's nothing the matter with the mare and the sale will go through."

"I hope so," said Frank, rising without much show of energy. He was clearly on the edge of real discouragement. "If it doesn't—and that assessment to be met—ah, well! What's the use of worrying? It doesn't help the matter any." He walked slowly to the window and looked out. "Here come Madge and Aunt 'Lethe," he announced, "through with their shopping at last. How different Madge looks from the little mountain-girl I first knew!" He turned and faced the Colonel. "Ah, if the world knew her as I do—"

The Colonel left the room, bound for the telegraph-office, just before a shrill scream came from the corridor, without, startling Layson greatly.

"Oh, dellaw!" the frightened voice said. "Le' me out! Le' me out!"

He recognized the voice, at once, as belonging to the girl whom he had been discussing with the Colonel, and it was so full of terror that he rushed quickly to the door, prepared to rescue her from some dire peril.

"What can be the matter?" he thought, frightened.

At the door he met Madge, white of face and startled, coming in.

"Why, Madge! What is it?"

She leaned against the writing-table, gasping. It was plain enough that she had been greatly frightened.

"Wait till I git my breath," she said; and then: "They got us into a little room, and, all of a sudden, we started skallyhootin' fer th' roof—room an' all!"

Frank fell back, relieved, and trying not to show amusement.

"That was the elevator," he explained. "A machine to carry you upstairs and save you the work of climbing."

"Dellaw!" exclaimed the girl, not yet entirely calm. "As if I couldn't walk! Thought we was blowed up by another dynamighty bomb!"

Miss Alathea entered hurriedly, looking about the room, in evident distress. At sight of Madge she gave a great sigh of relief. "My dear, I'm so sorry you were frightened!"

The girl laughed nervously, pulling herself together. "I understand, now, Miss 'Lethe, and I'm as cool as a cucumber."

There was a group of darkies at the door, and, suddenly, they all began to grin. Miss 'Lethe knew the sign.

"The Colonel's coming," she said positively. "Their faces show it. Look at them?"

Her guess proved a true prophecy. The Colonel, plainly busy with absorbing thoughts, was striding along the uneven old brick sidewalk, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, when the crowd of darkies, sure of his good-nature, beneficiaries from past favors, many times, surrounded him, beseeching him for tips upon the coming races. Very different were these city darkies from the respectful negroes of the Kentucky plantations of the time. They swarmed about him in an insistent horde.

"Who gwine win dat race, Marse Cunnel? Who gwine win dat race?" they chorussed.

He stopped and beamed at them good-naturedly.

"Who's going to win?" said he. "Queen Bess, of course."

He joined the group, inside, with a bundle in one hand and an open telegram in the other. "Good morning, ladies. Miss 'Lethe, you're looking fresh and blooming as you used to twenty years ago." He tried to catch himself, but failed. "As fresh and blooming," he corrected, "as usual, Miss 'Lethe." His bow was very courtly and her own no less so.

"Frank, my boy," said he, turning to the youthful owner of Queen Bess, "I've got their answer, and it's all right."

Frank had been acutely worried. There had been some question of the sale of the mare to the Dyer Brothers before the fire; now that this disaster had occurred and stories had been started, as, of course, he knew they must have been, about injuries to her, there might be, he had feared, good reason to expect the celebrated horsemen to withdraw their proposition. The Colonel's news, therefore, was very welcome.

"They take the mare?" he asked, all eagerness."

"N-o," began the Colonel, "but—"

Frank's face fell, instantly, and his shoulders drooped despairingly. "Then it's all wrong."

"Not yet," said the Colonel, "score again." He raised the telegram and read from it: "'Can't take mare without positive proof that she's all right. Let her run in the Ashland Oaks, to-day. If she wins, we take her.'" The Colonel looked up beamingly. "Do you hear? They take her!"

The condition which, now, the Dyer brothers made, when, before this, they had made none, bothered Frank. The telegram did not elate him quite as much as the old horseman had supposed it would. "Ah, if she wins!" said he.

Miss Alathea spoke up, eagerly. "Oh, Frank, of course she'll win."

"She's got to win!" exclaimed the Colonel with much emphasis.

Frank was in a pessimistic mood. "I'm not so sure," said he, a little gloomily. The strain of the past days had been a hard trial for the youth. "If that imp of a jockey, Ike, should get in range of a whiskey bottle—however, he has promised not to leave his room."

The Colonel laughed. "Ike leave his room?" he said. "You're right—he won't; but it will not be his promise that will keep him from it. He couldn't leave it if he would."

"Why not?" inquired Miss 'Lethe.

"Because," the Colonel answered, "I have got his clothes!"

"His clothes!" said Frank, astonished.

"Yes—a Napoleonic device. When I went to see him, this morning, I found him in bed. I knew how it might be if he got out, so I saw to it that his meals would reach him promptly, and borrowed the one suit of clothes he brought with him, under pretence of needing them to help me order a new jockey-suit for him to wear in the great race. I've been fair about it, too—I've got the new clothes for him." He pointed to the bundle which he had just brought in. "They're in there—and they'll not disgrace Queen Bess. They're the best I could get."

Frank, less interested in the clothes than in the fact that the jockey, now, was quite secure against temptation, sighed with satisfaction. "Then he's safe," said he.

The Colonel nodded, notably well satisfied with his performance. Miss Alathea, shocked, as she tried to be, by all this business, adjunct of gambling, every bit of it, yet smiled admiringly at the big horseman. Only Madge, learned, through much experience with mountaineers, whose greatest curse is whisky, in the ways of men addicted to its use, was not convinced that all was surely well.

"I'd keep a watch on him, just the same," she said. Now that she understood the vast importance of this race to Layson her whole heart was wrapped up in its fortunes. "When a man wants whisky he gener'ly finds a way to git it."

"You're right, Madge," Frank agreed. "I think I'll go and look after him, now."

He started toward the door just as a knock sounded on it. When he opened it he found Horace Holton standing waiting for admittance. The man seemed to be excited.

"I don't want to intrude, sar," said the ex-merchant in slaves, "but I come to tell you what you'd orter know. Th' news of th' fire, last night, hev set ev'rybody wild. They're lookin' to you, sar, to sw'ar out a warrant for Joe Lorey an' set th' sheriff on his track."

Frank came back into the room with the old man, worried by the news which he had brought. He had been thinking of this very matter and he was not at all convinced that he wished to swear a warrant out for Lorey. Finally, after a few seconds of silent and deep thought, he shook his head. "I want more proof, first," he declared.

Holton was astonished and ill-pleased. "What more proof d' ye want?" he asked. "Ain't it as plain as day that he come down from th' mountings to get even with you for th' raidin' of his still? Who else would 'a' done it?"

Madge was listening with flushed face and frowning brow. She did not, for a second, think Joe Lorey was the culprit. Her suspicions had not wholly crystalized, but she had known the mountain-boy since she had known anyone, and she could not believe that he would fire a building in which was confined a dumb and helpless creature. She knew him to be quite as fond of animals as she was. She believed Holton, also, had some ulterior reason, which she did not fathom, then, for trying to fasten suspicion on the lad. In her earnestness, as she considered these things, she stepped close to the old man, almost truculently. "That's what I mean to find out," she declared. "Who else done it."

Holton was angered by her manner and her opposition. He had not expected to meet any difficulty in the execution of his plan to throw the blame of the outrageous crime at Woodlawn, on the shoulders of the mountaineer. "What have you got to do with it?" he angrily demanded.

She was not impressed by his quick show of temper. "Reckon I've got as much to do with it as you hev," she replied. "Joe Lorey wouldn't never plan to burn a helpless dumb critter. He ain't no such coward."

"Who else had a call to do it?" said the old man, placed, unexpectedly, on the defensive. "Who else war an enemy of Mr. Layson's?"

Madge spoke slowly. She was not sure, at all, whom she was accusing; her suspicions were indefinite, obscure, but they were taking form within her mind. "Thar's one as I knows on," she slowly answered. "It's th' one as told Joe Lorey that Mr. Frank had set th' revenuers onto him." Her conviction strengthened as she spoke, and, as she continued, she looked Holton firmly in the eye and spoke with emphasis. "Show me th' man as told that lie, an' I'll show you th' scoundrel as tried to burn Queen Bess!"

Layson liked the spirit of her warm defense of her old friend, and, himself, knew enough about the moonshiner to make it seem quite reasonable. He knew that Joe was a crude creature, but believed, and had good reason to believe, that he had his code of honor which he would abide by at all cost. It was impossible for him to feel convinced that this would have permitted him to set fire to the stable. "Madge, I believe you're right," said he.

Holton was nonplussed. Things were not going as he had expected and had wished them to, at all. "Oh, shore, it war Joe Lorey," he protested. "It couldn't 'a' been nobody else. I warns you, here an' now, Layson, that ef you don't set th' law after him he'll be lynched before to-morrer night."

Layson was a little angered by the man's persistence. "I'll see that that doesn't happen," he replied, "and I'll leave no stone unturned to find the scoundrel who really did the deed, and have him punished. But I'm not certain that the man will prove to be Joe Lorey."

Holton, angry, baffled and astonished, left the room, with a maddening conviction growing in his mind that things were going wrong and would continue to go wrong. He almost regretted, now, that he had yielded to the impulse to set fire to the stable. If Layson would not let him throw suspicion where he had intended it should fall, then one part of his plan would have failed utterly: he would not have put Joe Lorey, who, at liberty, must ever be a peril to him, from his path; and, furthermore, if they kept on with investigation, in the end they might—they might—but he would not let himself believe that, by any possibility, the real truth could come out. He assured himself as he stepped out into the crowded street that he was safe, whether or not the crime was ever fastened on Joe Lorey.