perhead was fat and frisky. "She don't want to
see you, Jeff--an old has-been like you! No, no; I'd better not go. I
won't! There, if I didn't leave that football stuff on the saddle! I'll
take it off. It might get lost. Whoa, Copperhead!"

Copperhead, however, declined to whoa on any terms. His eyes bulged out;
he reared, he pawed, he snorted, he bucked, he squealed, he did anything
but whoa. Exasperated, Jeff caught the bridle by the cheek piece and
swung into the saddle. After a few preliminaries in the pitching line,
Jeff started bravely for Hospital Springs.

It was destined that this act of renunciation should be thwarted.
Copperhead stopped and dug his feet in the ground as if about to take
root. Jeff dug the spurs home. With an agonized bawl, Copperhead made a
creditable ascension, shook himself and swapped ends before he hit the
ground again. "_Wooh!_" he said. His nose was headed now for Arcadia; he
followed his nose, his roan flanks fanned vigorously with a doubled
rope.

"Headstrong, stubborn, unmanageable brute! Oh, well, have it your own
way then, you old fool! You'll be sorry!" Copperhead leaped out to the
loosened rein. "This is just plain kidnapping!" said Jeff.

Kidnapped and kidnapper were far out on the plain as night came on.
Arcadia road stretched dimly to the east; the far lights of La Luz
flashed through the leftward dusk; straight before them was a glint and
sparkle in the sky, faint, diffused, wavering; beyond, a warm and mellow
glow broke the blackness of the mountain wall, where the lights of
low-hidden Arcadia beat up against Rainbow Rim.

Jeff was past his first vexation; he sang as he rode:

"There was ink on her thumb when I kissed her hand,
And she whispered: 'If you should die
I'd write you an epitaph, gloomy and grand!'
'Time enough for that!' says I.

"Keep a-movin here, Copperhead! Time fugits right along. You will play
hooky, will you? 'I'm going to be a horse!'"

CHAPTER V.

THE MASKERS

"For Ellinor (her Christian name was Ellinor)
Had twenty-seven different kinds of hell in her."

--RICHARD HOVEY.

It lacked little of the eleventh hour when the football player reached
the ballroom--last comer to the revels. A bandage round his head and a
rubber noseguard, which also hid his mouth, served for a mask, eked out
by crisscrossed strips of courtplaster. One arm was in a sling--for
stage purposes only.