en he's sober, but when he's drunk--well, over in Kentucky, they
call him the Wild Dog."

Several days later we started out through that same Gap. The glum
stableman looked at the Blight's girths three times, and with my own
eyes starting and my heart in my mouth, I saw her pass behind her
sixteen-hand-high mule and give him a friendly tap on the rump as she
went by. The beast gave an appreciative flop of one ear and that
was all. Had I done that, any further benefit to me or mine would be
incorporated in the terms of an insurance policy. So, stating this, I
believe I state the limit and can now go on to say at last that it was
because she seemed to be loved by man and brute alike that a big man of
her own town, whose body, big as it was, was yet too small for his heart
and from whose brain things went off at queer angles, always christened
her perversely as--"The Blight."

II. ON THE WILD DOG'S TRAIL

So up we went past Bee Rock, Preacher's Creek and Little Looney, past
the mines where high on a "tipple" stood the young engineer looking down
at us, and looking after the Blight as we passed on into a dim rocky
avenue walled on each side with rhododendrons. I waved at him and shook
my head--we would see him coming back. Beyond a deserted log-cabin we
turned up a spur of the mountain. Around a clump of bushes we came on
a gray-bearded mountaineer holding his horse by the bridle and from a
covert high above two more men appeared with Winchesters. The Blight
breathed forth an awed whisper:

"Are they moonshiners?"

I nodded sagely, "Most likely," and the Blight was thrilled. They might
have been squirrel-hunters most innocent, but the Blight had heard much
talk of moonshine stills and mountain feuds and the men who run them
and I took the risk of denying her nothing. Up and up we went, those
two mules swaying from side to side with a motion little short of
elephantine and, by and by, the Blight called out:

"You ride ahead and don't you DARE look back."

Accustomed to obeying the Blight's orders, I rode ahead with eyes to
the front. Presently, a shriek made me turn suddenly. It was nothing--my
little sister's mule had gone near a steep cliff--perilously near, as
its rider thought, but I saw why I must not look back; those two little
girls were riding astride on side-saddles, the booted little right foot
of each dangling stirrupless--a posture quite decorous but ludicrous.

"Let us know if anybody comes," th