always rewarded
her fidelity. She loved to have me wash her legs and braid her mane and
rub her coat until it glowed, and she carried herself proudly when I was
on her back. I had named her Sally because that was the only name which
seemed to express my fondness.

"Mr. Purvis" was not an experienced rider. My filly led him at a swift
gallop over the hills and I heard many a muttered complaint behind me,
but she liked a free head when we took the road together and I let her
have her way.

Coming back we fell in with another rider who had been resting at
Seaver's little tavern through the heat of the day. He was a traveler on
his way to Canton and had missed the right trail and wandered far
afield. He had a big military saddle with bags and shiny brass trimmings
and a pistol in a holster, all of which appealed to my eye and interest.
The filly was a little tired and the stranger and I were riding abreast
at a walk while Purvis trailed behind us. The sun had set and as we
turned the top of a long hill the dusk was lighted with a rich, golden
glow on the horizon far below us.

We heard a quick stir in the bushes by the roadside.

"What's that?" Purvis demanded in a half-whisper of excitement. We
stopped.

Then promptly a voice--a voice which I did not recognize--broke the
silence with these menacing words sharply spoken:

"Your money or your life!"

"Mr. Purvis" whirled his horse and lashed him up the hill. Things
happened quickly in the next second or two. Glancing backward I saw him
lose a stirrup and fall and pick himself up and run as if his life
depended on it. I saw the stranger draw his pistol. A gun went off in
the edge of the bushes close by. The flash of fire from its muzzle
leaped at the stranger. The horses reared and plunged and mine threw me
in a clump of small poppies by the roadside and dashed down the hill.
All this had broken into the peace of a summer evening on a lonely road
and the time in which it had happened could be measured, probably, by
ten ticks of the watch.

My fall on the stony siding had stunned me and I lay for three or four
seconds, as nearly as I can estimate it, in a strange and peaceful
dream. Why did I dream of Amos Grimshaw coming to visit me, again, and
why, above all, should it have seemed to me that enough things were said
and done in that little flash of a dream to fill a whole day--enough of
talk and play and going and coming, the whole ending with a talk on the
haymow