bly assumed, "With--a--with Mr. Barton?"

"Why, yes."

"And a smoke?"

"Yes; and now what's it all about?"

Lute broke into merry laughter. "Just as I told you that you would do.
Am I not a prophet? But I knew before I saw you that my forecast had
come true. I have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew he had walked with
you last night, for he is vowing by all his fetishes and idols that you
are a perfectly splendid young man. I could see it with my eyes shut.
The Chris Dunbar glamour has fallen upon him. But I have not finished
the catechism by any means. Where have you been all morning?"

"Where I am going to take you this afternoon."

"You plan well without knowing my wishes."

"I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see a horse I have found."

Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, "Oh, good!"

"He is a beauty," Chris said.

But her face had suddenly gone grave, and apprehension brooded in her
eyes.

"He's called Comanche," Chris went on. "A beauty, a regular beauty, the
perfect type of the Californian cow-pony. And his lines--why, what's the
matter?"

"Don't let us ride any more," Lute said, "at least for a while. Really,
I think I am a tiny bit tired of it, too."

He was looking at her in astonishment, and she was bravely meeting his
eyes.

"I see hearses and flowers for you," he began, "and a funeral oration; I
see the end of the world, and the stars falling out of the sky, and the
heavens rolling up as a scroll; I see the living and the dead gathered
together for the final judgement, the sheep and the goats, the lambs and
the rams and all the rest of it, the white-robed saints, the sound of
golden harps, and the lost souls howling as they fall into the Pit--all
this I see on the day that you, Lute Story, no longer care to ride a
horse. A horse, Lute! a horse!"

"For a while, at least," she pleaded.

"Ridiculous!" he cried. "What's the matter? Aren't you well?--you who
are always so abominably and adorably well!"

"No, it's not that," she answered. "I know it is ridiculous, Chris, I
know it, but the doubt will arise. I cannot help it. You always say I
am so sanely rooted to the earth and reality and all that, but--perhaps
it's superstition, I don't know--but the whole occurrence, the messages
of Planchette, the possibility of my father's hand, I know not how,
reaching, out to Ban's rein and hurling him and you to death, the
correspondence between my father's statement that he has twice