wn, emptied another pistol at Marston on sight
and fled for the hills.

The enraged guard chased him for two days and from that day the Wild Dog
was a marked man. The Guard wanted many men, but if they could have had
their choice they would have picked out of the world of malefactors that
same Wild Dog.

Why all this should have thrown the Hon. Samuel Budd into such gloom
I could not understand--except that the Wild Dog had been so loyal a
henchman to him in politics, but later I learned a better reason, that
threatened to cost the Hon. Sam much more than the fines that, as I
later learned, he had been paying for his mountain friend.

Meanwhile, the Blight was coming from her Northern home through the
green lowlands of Jersey, the fat pastures of Maryland, and, as the
white dresses of schoolgirls and the shining faces of darkies thickened
at the stations, she knew that she was getting southward. All the way
she was known and welcomed, and next morning she awoke with the keen air
of the distant mountains in her nostrils and an expectant light in her
happy eyes. At least the light was there when she stepped daintily from
the dusty train and it leaped a little, I fancied, when Marston, bronzed
and flushed, held out his sunburnt hand. Like a convent girl she babbled
questions to the little sister as the dummy puffed along and she bubbled
like wine over the midsummer glory of the hills. And well she might, for
the glory of the mountains, full-leafed, shrouded in evening shadows,
blue-veiled in the distance, was unspeakable, and through the Gap the
sun was sending his last rays as though he, too, meant to take a peep at
her before he started around the world to welcome her next day. And she
must know everything at once. The anniversary of the Great Day on which
all men were pronounced free and equal was only ten days distant and
preparations were going on. There would be a big crowd of mountaineers
and there would be sports of all kinds, and games, but the tournament
was to be the feature of the day.

"A tournament?" "Yes, a tournament," repeated the little sister,
and Marston was going to ride and the mean thing would not tell what
mediaeval name he meant to take. And the Hon. Sam Budd--did the Blight
remember him? (Indeed, she did)--had a "dark horse," and he had bet
heavily that his dark horse would win the tournament--whereat the little
sister looked at Marston and at the Blight and smiled disdainfully. And
the Wild D