at
you sell.'

"After hearing his visitor out, the farmer looked off across the country
and spat ruminatively.

"'I ain't never seen no hawg that could catch a fox,' he said, and with
that turned and went into the barn, evidently regarding the matter as
closed. Clearly he did not share the view of the Irishman who dismissed
fox hunting with the remark that a fox was 'damned hard to catch and no
good when you got him.'"

CHAPTER XVII

"A CERTAIN PARTY"

Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers
From their own music when they stray.

Lost is our freedom
When we submit to women so:
Why do we need 'em
When, in their best, they work our woe?

--THOMAS CAMPION.

The motor ride to The Plains was a cold and rough one. I remember that
we had to ford a stream or two, and that once, where the mud had been
churned up and made deep by the wheels of many vehicles, we almost
stuck. Excepting at the fords, the road was dusty, and the dust was kept
in circulation by the feet of countless saddle horses, on which men from
the country to the south of Upperville were riding home from the races.
All the way to The Plains our lights kept picking up these riders,
sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, all of them going our way, we
taking their dust until we overhauled them, then giving them ours.

Dust was over me like a close-fitting gray veil when I reached the
railroad station only to find that the train was late. I had a magazine
in my bag, but the light in the waiting-room was poor, so I took a place
near the stove and gave myself up to anticipations of a bath, a
comfortable room, clean clothing, and a good supper with my
companion--and another companion much more beautiful.

I tried to picture her as she would look. She would be in evening dress,
of course. After thinking over different colors, and trying them upon
her in my mind, I decided that her gown should be of a delicate pink,
and should be made of some frail, beautiful material which would float
about her like gossamer when she moved, and shimmer like the light of
dawn upon the dew. You know the sort of gown I mean: one of those gowns
upon which a man is afraid to lay his finger-tips lest the material melt
away beneath them; a gown which, he feels, was never touched by
seamstress of the human species, but was made by fairies out of woven
moonlight, star dust, afterglow, and the fragr