uke Todd, dryly. "S'pose ye teach yer gran'mammy ter
suck aigs. I knowed all that afore."

Peters was abashed, and with some difficulty collected himself.

"An' I knowed ye knowed it, Luke," he hastily conceded. "But hyar be
what I'm a-lookin' at--the law 'ain't got no pervision fur a stray horse
ez kem of a dark night, 'thout nobody's percuremint, ter the ranger's
own house. Now, the p'int o' law ez I wanted ter ax the lawyers 'bout
air this--kin the ranger be the ranger an' the taker-up too?"

He turned his eyes upon the great landscape lying beneath, flooded
with the chill matutinal sunshine, and flecked here and there with
the elusive shadow's of the fleecy drifting clouds. Far away the long
horizontal lines of the wooded spurs, converging on either side of the
valley and rising one behind the other, wore a subdued azure, all unlike
the burning blue of summer, and lay along the calm, passionless sky,
that itself was of a dim, repressed tone. On the slopes nearer, the
leafless boughs, massed together, had purplish-garnet depths of color
wherever the sunshine struck aslant, and showed richly against the
faintly tinted horizon. Here and there among the boldly jutting gray
crags hung an evergreen-vine, and from a gorge on the opposite mountain
gleamed a continuous flash, like the waving of a silver plume, where a
cataract sprang down the rocks. In the depths of the valley, a field in
which crab-grass had grown in the place of the harvested wheat showed
a tiny square of palest yellow, and beside it a red clay road, running
over a hill, was visible. Above all a hawk was flying.

"Afore the winter fairly set in las' year," Peters resumed, presently,
"a stray kem ter Tobe's house. He 'lowed ter me ez he fund her
a-standin' by the fodder-stack a-pullin' off'n it. An' he 'quired
round, an' he never hearn o' no owner. I reckon he never axed outside o'
Lonesome," he added, cynically.

He puffed industriously at his pipe for a few moments; then continued:
"Wa'al, he 'lowed he couldn't feed the critter fur fun. An' he couldn't
work her till she war appraised an' sech, that bein' agin the law
fur strays. So he jes ondertook ter be ranger an' taker-up too--the
bangedest consarn in the kentry! Ef the leetle mare hed been wall-eyed,
or lame, or ennything, he wouldn't hev wanted ter be ranger an' taker-up
too. But she air the peartest little beastis--she war jes bridle-wise
when she fust kem--young an' spry!"

Luke Todd was abou