mare hitched to a lumber
sleigh which they had just passed. Erik, growing very serious, paused
abruptly.

A second whinny, lower than the first, but almost alluring and cajoling,
was so directly addressed to Erik that he could not help stepping up to
the mare and patting her on the nose.

"You once had a horse you cared a great deal for, didn't you?" his
friend remarked, casually.

"Oh, don't speak about it," answered Erik, in a voice that shook with
emotion; "I loved Lady Clare as I never loved any creature in this
world--except my father, of course," he added, reflectively.

But what was the matter with the old lumber nag? At the sound of the
name Lady Clare she pricked up her ears, and lifted her head with a
pathetic attempt at alertness. With a low, insinuating neighing she
rubbed her nose against the lieutenant's cheek. He had let his hand
glide over her long, thin neck, when quite suddenly his fingers slid
into a deep scar in the withers.

"My God!" he cried, while the tears started to his eyes, "am I awake, or
am I dreaming?"

"What in the world is the matter?" inquired his comrade, anxiously.

"It is Lady Clare! By the heavens, it is Lady Clare!"

"That old ramshackle of a lumber nag whose every rib you can count
through her skin is your beautiful thoroughbred?" ejaculated his friend,
incredulously. "Come now, don't be a goose."

"I'll tell you of it some other time," said Erik, quietly; "but there's
not a shadow of a doubt that this is Lady Clare."

Yes, strange as it may seem, it was indeed Lady Clare. But oh, who would
have recognized in this skeleton, covered with a rusty-black skin and
tousled mane and forelock in which chaff and dirt were entangled--who
would have recognized in this drooping and rickety creature the proud,
the dainty, the exquisite Lady Clare? Her beautiful tail, which had once
been her pride, was now a mere scanty wisp; and a sharp, gnarled ridge
running along the entire length of her back showed every vertebra of
her spine through the notched and scarred skin. Poor Lady Clare, she had
seen hard usage. But now the days of her tribulations are at an end.
It did not take Erik long to find the half-tipsy lumberman who was
Lady Clare's owner; nor to agree with him on the price for which he was
willing to part with her.

There is but little more to relate. By interviews and correspondence
with the different parties through whose hands the mare had passed,
Erik succeeded in tracin