for the dog.
I'm just driving around enjoying myself. The air's so invigorating,
and I like to feel the snow settling between my collar and the back of
my neck."

At four o'clock Van Bibber was about as nearly frozen as a man could be
after he had swallowed half a bottle of brandy. It was so cold that
the ice formed on his cigar when he took it from his lips, and his feet
and the dashboard seemed to have become stuck together.

"I think I'll give it up," he said, finally, as he turned the horse's
head towards Southampton. "I hate to lose three hundred and fifty
dollars as much as any man; but I love my fair young life, and I'm not
going to turn into an equestrian statue in ice for anybody's collie
dog."

He drove the cart to the stable and unharnessed the horse himself, as
all the grooms were out scouring the country, and then went upstairs
unobserved and locked himself in his room, for he did not care to have
the others know that he had given out so early in the chase. There was
a big open fire in his room, and he put on his warm things and
stretched out before it in a great easy-chair, and smoked and sipped
the brandy and chuckled with delight as he thought of the four other
men racing around in the snow.

"They may have more nerve than I," he soliloquized, "and I don't say
they have not; but they can have all the credit and rewards they want,
and I'll be satisfied to stay just where I am."

At seven he saw the four riders coming back dejectedly, and without the
dog. As they passed his room he heard one of the men ask if Van Bibber
had got back yet, and another say yes, he had, as he had left the cart
in the stable, but that one of the servants had said that he had
started out again on foot.

"He has, has he?" said the voice. "Well, he's got sporting blood, and
he'll need to keep it at fever heat if he expects to live. I'm frozen
so that I can't bend my fingers."

Van Bibber smiled, and moved comfortably in the big chair; he had dozed
a little, and was feeling very contented. At half-past seven he began
to dress, and at five minutes to eight he was ready for dinner and
stood looking out of the window at the moonlight on the white lawn
below. The snow had stopped falling, and everything lay quiet and
still as though it were cut in marble. And then suddenly across the
lawn, came a black, bedraggled object on four legs, limping painfully,
and lifting its feet as though there were lead on them.

"Gre