l you some things
which it is well that you should know."

To keep them out of mischief Friedrich thrust his clinched hands into
his pockets. Morgan did not see the application of von Rittenheim's
words about the sky, but he felt a threat in his tone, and, being no
coward, he came down the steps promptly. He even went so far as to
dispense with his quid.

A sharp contrast they presented,--the German, erect, well-poised,
plainly a soldier in spite of his ill-fitting clothes; the American,
lank and stomachless, yet taller than the other in spite of his bent
shoulders. His tawny beard was guiltless of care. Of all his slack body
only his eyes showed alertness as they looked sidewise from under his
old felt hat.

"Ah don't know what you-all are driving at, but Ah'm thirsting fo' that
information you're advertising to present me with free!" he drawled.

Von Rittenheim now had himself under control, though his feet and hands
were cold because of the retreat to his head of the fighting fluid.

"Let me ask you--after you were here with Mrs. Morgan--it is now three
weeks ago--did you not meet a man who asked you the way?"

"Asked the way? Let me see. Yes, Ah 'low we did. White horse?"

"A white horse. Exactly," returned von Rittenheim, dryly. "You directed
him on his road only too well."

"What do you mean? He asked if there was any cut that would shorten the
way to Asheville, and Ah told him the shortest he could do was to stick
to the State Road."

"Allow me to tell you, sir, that you lie."

Dr. Morgan flung up his head angrily. But he was loath to think that
von Rittenheim, whom he liked, was trying to pick a quarrel with him.
Besides, English spoken with a foreign accent fails to carry conviction
to ears unaccustomed to hearing it, and Morgan thought the German
unfortunate in his choice of a word.

"You mean Ah'm mistaken, and there is a short cut? If there is, Ah
don't know it. Where do you leave the State Road?"

"I mean, sir, that you tell not the truth, that you lie, when you say
that that was your conversation with that man. You lie, I say!"

Now there could be no mistake. The Doctor's sixty years fell from him
like a mantle. He looked a young man, and his face unfurled the banner
of wrath that knows no nation, but calls all the earth its own. The two
men glared at each other like dogs leaping against their collars, eager
to bury their teeth in each other's throats.

"By God," growled the elder man, "if