owed, his face
working curiously, striving to hold back the sobs.

For Merton Gill was once more Clifford Armytage, popular idol of the
screen, in his great role of Buck Benson bidding the accustomed farewell
to his four-footed pal that had brought him safely through countless
dangers. How are we to know that in another couple of hundred feet of
the reel Buck will escape the officers of the law who have him for that
hold-up of the Wallahoola stage--of which he was innocent--leap from
a second-story window of the sheriff's office onto the back of his old
pal, and be carried safely over the border where the hellhounds can't
touch him until his innocence is proved by Estelle St. Clair, the New
York society girl, whose culture demanded a gentleman but whose heart
demanded a man. How are we to know this? We only know that Buck Benson
always has to kiss his horse good-by at this spot in the drama.

Merton Gill is impressively Buck Benson. His sobs are choking him. And
though Gashwiler's delivery horse is not a pinto, and could hardly get
over the border ahead of a sheriff's posse, the scene is affecting.

"Good-by, again, old pal, and God bless ye!" sobs Merton.

CHAPTER II. THAT NIGHT--THE APARTMENTS OF CLIFFORD ARMYTAGE

Merton Gill mealed at the Gashwiler home. He ate his supper in moody
silence, holding himself above the small gossip of the day that engaged
Amos and his wife. What to him meant the announcement that Amos expected
a new line of white goods on the morrow, or Mrs. Gashwiler's version
of a regrettable incident occurring at that afternoon's meeting of
the Entre Nous Five Hundred Club, in which the score had been juggled
adversely to Mrs. Gashwiler, resulting in the loss of the first prize,
a handsome fern dish, and concerning which Mrs. Gashwiler had thought
it best to speak her mind? What importance could he attach to the
disclosure of Metta Judson, the Gashwiler hired girl, who chatted freely
during her appearances with food, that Doc Cummins had said old Grandma
Foutz couldn't last out another day; that the Peter Swansons were
sending clear to Chicago for Tilda's trousseau; and that Jeff Murdock
had arrested one of the Giddings boys, but she couldn't learn if it was
Ferd or Gus, for being drunk as a fool and busting up a bazaar out at
the Oak Grove schoolhouse, and the fighting was something terrible.

Scarcely did he listen to these petty recitals. He ate in silence, and
when he had finished th