the tips of
the slender fingers. Some passion seemed to exhaust itself in this
dancing paroxysm; for all at once she reeled from the middle of the
floor, and flung herself, as it were in a careless coil, upon a great
tiger's-skin which was spread out in one corner of the apartment.

The old Doctor stood motionless, looking at her as she lay panting on the
tawny, black-lined robe of the dead monster which stretched out beneath
her, its rude flattened outline recalling the Terror of the Jungle as he
crouched for his fatal spring. In a few moments her head drooped upon
her arm, and her glittering eyes closed,--she was sleeping. He stood
looking at her still, steadily, thoughtfully, tenderly. Presently he
lifted his hand to his forehead, as if recalling some fading remembrance
of other years.

"Poor Catalina!"

This was all he said. He shook his head,--implying that his visit would
be in vain to-day,--returned to his sulky, and rode away, as if in a
dream.

CHAPTER XI.

COUSIN RICHARD'S VISIT.

The Doctor was roused from his revery by the clatter of approaching
hoofs. He looked forward and saw a young fellow galloping rapidly
towards him.

A common New-England rider with his toes turned out, his elbows jerking
and the daylight showing under him at every step, bestriding a cantering
beast of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be
thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of
those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of
the cities are the unshod countryboys, who ride "bareback," with only a
halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs,
and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the
hardest trot as if they loved it.--This was a different sight on which
the Doctor was looking. The streaming mane and tail of the unshorn,
savage-looking, black horse, the dashing grace with which the young
fellow in the shadowy sombrero, and armed with the huge spurs, sat in his
high-peaked saddle, could belong only to the mustang of the Pampas and
his master. This bold rider was a young man whose sudden apparition in
the quiet inland town had reminded some of the good people of a bright,
curly-haired boy they had known some eight or ten years before as little
Dick Venner.

This boy had passed several of his early years at the Dudley mansion, the
playmate of Elsie, being her cousin, two or three ye