you? Well, you see--"

At that instant the pony suffered a fresh access of alarm. He bounded
suddenly sideways, and at the same time ducked as if he purposed to
stand on his head, though what good that would have done only he knew.
The movement threw Smythe over the pony's head, and flat on his back
in the dust; and in a twinkling Peanuts was dashing up the road, with
his tail in the air, and the stirrups flapping at his sides.

For some seconds Smythe lay half-stunned; but before Marion and
Hillyer, leaping from the automobile, were able to reach him, he sat
up, and began to straighten out his crushed sombrero, eyeing it
critically. He was covered with dust, and one end of his white collar,
torn from the button, stuck out above his coat. But his aplomb was
perfect.

"As I was saying, when interrupted," he began, continuing to minister
to the sombrero, "you see I am an accomplished horseman."

Marion and Hillyer broke out in uncontrollable laughter. Then Hillyer
hastened to assist Smythe to rise.

"Not hurt, I hope?" said Robert.

"Objectively, no. Subjectively, yes. Sartorially, a wreck."

They laughed now without restraint, which seemed to please Smythe
immensely. He proceeded to tuck the end of the torn collar back into
its place, where it refused to stay; to brush his clothes; to adjust
the abused sombrero in exactly the long-studied angle on his head.

"I hope you'll forgive us for laughing," said Marion, "but--"

"Say no more about it, please!" protested Smythe. "I'd rather make you
laugh than weep--assuming that anybody would weep for me."

"Oh, I'd have felt very badly if you'd been hurt," Marion assured him.
"And you might have been, too."

"No, a cropper like that's nothing. Peanuts isn't--" He paused just a
second to look into Marion's eyes with an expression that arrested her
attention sharply. "Peanuts isn't Sunnysides."

"Sunnysides?" she cried out unguardedly.

Smythe's eyes warned her, as he waited to give her time for
self-control. He did not know how far Hillyer was in her confidence.

"Is there news--about--Sunnysides?" she faltered, struggling
desperately with herself.

"Yes," he answered. Then he continued slowly, in as light a manner as
possible, the while he held her with a concentrated gaze: "I'd been
down the valley as far as the mouth of the canyon. Coming back, about
two miles below where Haig's road joins this, I saw the sorrels in a
cloud of dust. 'Hello!' I said. 'Somethin