ction. The color came flooding back to her startled face.

"Oh, are you hurt?" she cried.

A puzzled frown struggled through the mud.

"Hurt?" he echoed. "Who, me?... Why, no--leastwise, I guess not."

He wiggled his fingers, raised his arms, wagged his head doubtfully and
slowly, first sidewise and then up and down; shook himself guardedly,
and finally raised tentative boot-tips to the surface. After this
painstaking inspection he settled contentedly back again.

"Oh, no, I'm all right," he reported. "Only I lost a big, black, fine,
young, nice horse somehow. You ain't seen nothing of him, have you?"

"Then why don't you get out?" she demanded. "I believe you are hurt."

"Get out? Why, yes, ma'am. Certainly. Why not?" But the girl was already
beginning to clamber down, grasping the shrubbery to aid in the descent.

Now the bank was steep and sheer. So the merman rose, tactfully
clutching the grapevines behind him as a plausible excuse for turning
his back. It followed as a corollary of this generous act that he must
needs be lame, which he accordingly became. As this mishap became acute,
his quick eyes roved down the canyon, where he saw what gave him pause;
and he groaned sincerely under his breath. For the black horse had taken
to the parked uplands, the dragging rope had tangled in a snaggy
tree-root, and he was tracing weary circles in bootless effort to be
free.

Tactful still, the dripping merman hobbled to the nearest shade
wherefrom the luckless black horse should be invisible, eclipsed by the
intervening ridge, and there sank down in a state of exhaustion, his
back to a friendly tree-trunk.

CHAPTER II

FIRST AID

"Oh woman! in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy and hard to please;
But seen too oft, familiar with thy face
We first endure, then pity, then embrace!"

A moment later the girl was beside him, pity in her eyes.

"Let me see that cut on your head," she said. She dropped on her knee
and parted the hair with a gentle touch.

"Why, you're real!" breathed the injured near-centaur, beaming with
wonder and gratification.

She sat down limply and gave way to wild laughter.

"So are you!" she retorted. "Why, that is exactly what I was thinking! I
thought maybe I was asleep and having an extraordinary dream. That wound
on your head is not serious, if that's all." She brushed back a wisp of
hair that blew across her eyes.

"I hurt this head just the other day,"