CHAPTER XXXIII

“When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all."— PUBLILIUS SYRUS.

"When the fight begins with himself, the man is worth something."- BROWNING.

"Sometimes I feel so cheap that I could write a poem about it, but straightway I cannot for I am no longer mean.”—THOREAU.

LINTON had been "breaking" the sorrel filly to the buggy. She went well, but at times was a little hard-mouthed and made her old dashes for favorite turnings, especially if these led toward her old home. One afternoon, early after dinner, he drove over to Mr. McBride's to see Shan and thank him for his coming by for him a few days previous.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't see you miss a little," he said jokingly.

But Shan was not responsive to the engineer's mood.

"You couldn't go out again this afternoon?" the latter inquired.

"No," said Shan, "we are out of flour. I've got ter go ter town."

"I'm sorry. I've only a few more days here. I shall not forget your kindness to me. But I hope I shall see you again before I start."

Shan's heart smote him, not so much that he could not go, but that he did not want to.

66

'Say," he said, "you take Pont along; he'll find some birds fer you."

"Why, I don't think he will follow me," said Linton.

"Wait till I git my gun. You take that and he'll ride with you."

When he came back from the house and handed up the gun to the engineer, holding the champing filly in, Linton said :

I

"This is very kind of you, McBride. would not accept all these favors now, for I would wait till another day when you could go, but Dolly is ill and I'd like to get a bird for her."

Shan's heart fell and he turned away his face, but Pont leaped into the buggy.

"Watch that filly," the boy said, because he must say something. "She's got the devil in her and is as uncertain -as as er woman."

And Linton remembered again as he drove along how much fierceness, almost viciousness,

this big-hearted boy had put into that comparison. He wondered if Miss Hudson had not failed to write to Shan this week. He guessed that that was the kind of flour he needed; he was going to town, doubtless, hoping to get a letter. Then he fancied Winnie Hudson, in her far northern home, writing out her heart to this Missouri stripling, while he, her old first lovemadly worshipping her yet, was dawdling the summer away teaching a sweet Missouri lass to know a pistil from a stamen. terrible unfitness somewhere! work out right?

Oh, there was a
Would it ever

Sad in his mood, he put the filly up, and went in and felt Dolly's pulse almost professionally. He had that tender, bedside touch which makes some persons ministering angels to the suffering. Round and round the house Pont bounded, whining, for fear the hunter would steal out some back door and go off without him.

A little later he started. Some boys had fortunately flushed some birds over on the crest before he came out; so now he knew where to find some.

The walk, to him, was delightful. The air was bracing, the woods were coloring rapidly,

and enough of haze stood on the hills and faraway swells to hint of Indian summer, that entrancing season when the year, like a dying saint, seems to catch upon its face the hue of heaven.

Here as he walked the young meadow-larks arose and flew, flirting their white tail feathers jauntily to their fellows; and to the great circle that Pont felt he must take or die, some young flickers rose from the ant-hills on the sward, and displaying their white rump patches, flew into some near-by oaks. Linton could hear them rejoicing as if they thought they had escaped a great danger.

At last Pont began a sort of uncertain sneak upon a bunch of grass, stopped, wagged his tail, and with a half laugh, almost, in his face, looked back at Linton. He knew well enough that his master would tolerate no points on rabbits, but perhaps this kind-countenanced biped would. He would test the metal of this hunter.

Linton, too, crept near, and the dog, encouraged by this, came down to a rigid point. Peeping closer, the hunter saw the hare. It was a thrilling thing to him, this silent battle of cunning against cunning. The dog had paused in

the instinct of caution, and was crouched in the expectancy of a spring.

The man had come "head on" to the hare, with the wind toward the latter's nose, as the creature nearly always sits. It was shivering in nervous expectation. There was an occasional humping of the body, just the merest, to feel that the great hind legs were in trim; and the engineer could notice the opening and closing of the harelipped slit beneath the nose as the nostril-flaps were lifted to investigate him by scent. There was occasionally the faintest waving of an ear, set to listen backward and outward toward the dog, and the conspicuous eyes seemed closed sleepily to the merest slits.

How wonderfully his senses "boxed the compass," and how perfectly his fur blended with the grass! Nothing but a nose or an accident could discover him.

Linton could not resist the idea that he could catch him, but when his hand came down, it was upon a warm bare place, and a white tail was bobbing away out yonder over the sod.

"I don't wonder," he said to himself, "that the girl felt that she might be justified by NatThe old dame is ahead of us yet in many

ure.