.

"Was ever a tent too full, when the lost traveller stumbled into camp
in the old days?" rejoined Fleda. The woman trembled to her feet, a
glad look in her eyes. "I ought to go, but I am tired and I will gladly
stay," she said and swayed against the table.

Madame Bulteel and Fleda put their arms round her, steadying her.

"This is not the way to act," said Fleda with a touch of sharp reproof.
Had she not her own trouble to face?

The stricken woman drew herself up and looked Fleda in the eyes. "I will
find the right way, if I can," she said with courage.

A half-hour later, as the old man sat alone in the room where he had
breakfasted, a rifle-shot rang out in the distance.

"The trouble begins," he said, as he rose and hastened into the hallway.

Another shot rang out. He caught up his wide felt hat, reached for a
great walking-stick in the corner, and left the house hurriedly.

CHAPTER XVI. THE MAYOR FILLS AN OFFICE

It was a false alarm which had startled Gabriel Druse, but it had
significance. The Orange funeral was not to take place until eleven
o'clock, and it was only eight o'clock when the Ry left his home. A
rifle-shot had, however, been fired across the Sagalac from the Manitou
side, and it had been promptly acknowledged from Lebanon. There was a
short pause, and then came another from the Lebanon side. It was merely
a warning and a challenge. The only man who could have controlled the
position was blind and helpless.

As Druse walked rapidly towards the bridge, he met Jowett. Jowett was
one of the few men in either town for whom the Ry had regard, and the
friendliness had had its origin in Jowett's knowledge of horseflesh.
This was a field in which the Ry was himself a master. He had ever been
too high-placed among his own people to trade and barter horses except
when, sending a score of Romanys on a hunt for wild ponies on the hills
of Eastern Europe, he had afterwards sold the tamed herd to the highest
bidders in some Balkan town; but he had an infallible eye for a horse.

It was a curious anomaly also that the one man in Lebanon who would
not have been expected to love and pursue horse-flesh was the Reverend
Reuben Tripple to whom Ingolby had given his conge, but who loved a
horse as he loved himself.

He was indeed a greater expert in horses than in souls. One of the
sights of Lebanon had been the appearance in the field of the "Reverend
Tripple," who owned a great, raw-boned bay mar