ual escape, when he had ridden the horse beyond camera range
at a safe walk, they had used another camera that gave the effect of
intense speed. The old horse had walked, but with an air of swiftness
that caused the audience intense delight.

Entered Marcel, the detective, in another scene Merton had not watched.
He emerged from the dance-hall to confront a horse that remained, an
aged counterpart of the horse Merton had ridden off. Marcel stared
intently into the beast's face, whereupon it reared and plunged as if
terrified by the spectacle of the cross-eyed man.

Merton recalled the horse in the village that had seemed to act so
intelligently. Probably a shot-gun had stimulated the present scene. The
detective thereupon turned aside, hastily donned his false mustache and
Sherlock Holmes cap, and the deceived horse now permitted him to mount.
He, too, walked off to the necromancy of a lens that multiplied his pace
a thousandfold. And the audience rocked in its seats.

One horse still remained before the dance-hall. The old mother emerged.
With one anguished look after the detective, she gathered up her
disreputable skirts and left the platform in a flying leap to land in
the saddle. There was no trickery about the speed at which her horse,
belaboured with the mop-pail, galloped in pursuit of the others. A
subtitle recited--"She has watched her dear ones leave the old nest
flat. Now she must go out over the hills and mop the other side of
them!"

Now came the sensational capture by lasso of the detective. But the
captor had not known that, as he dragged his quarry at the rope's end,
the latter had somehow possessed himself of a sign which he later walked
in with, a sign reading, "Join the Good Roads Movement!" nor that the
faithful old mother had ridden up to deposit her inverted mop-pail over
his head.

Merton Gill had twice started to leave. He wanted to leave. But each
time he found himself chained there by the evil fascination of this
monstrous parody. He remained to learn that the Montague girl had come
out to the great open spaces to lead a band of train-robbers from the
"Q.T. ranche."

He saw her ride beside a train and cast her lasso over the stack of the
locomotive. He saw her pony settle back on its haunches while the rope
grew taut and the train was forced to a halt. He saw the passengers
lined up by the wayside and forced to part with their valuables. Later,
when the band returned to the ranche with t