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“Them fellers says I bet I’d BRING IN a dark horse who would win this tournament, and if I don’t BRING him in, I lose just the same as though I had brought him in and he hadn’t won. An’ I reckon they’ve got me.”

“I guess they have.”

“It would have been like pickin’ money off a blackberry-bush, for I was goin’ to let the Wild Dog have that black horse o’ mine–the steadiest and fastest runner in this country–and my, how that fellow can pick off the rings! He’s been a-practising for a year, and I believe he could run the point o’ that spear of his through a lady’s finger-ring.”

“You’d better get somebody else.”

“Ah–that’s it. The Wild Dog sent word he’d send over another feller, named Dave Branham, who has been practising with him, who’s just as good, he says, as he is. I’m looking for him at twelve o’clock, an’ I’m goin’ to take him down an’ see what he can do on that black horse o’ mine. But if he’s no good, I lose five hundred, all right,” and he sloped away to his duties. For it was the Hon. Sam who was master of ceremonies that day. He was due now to read the Declaration of Independence in a poplar grove to all who would listen; he was to act as umpire at the championship base-ball game in the afternoon, and he was to give the “Charge” to the assembled knights before the tournament.

At ten o’clock the games began–and I took the Blight and the little sister down to the “grandstand”–several tiers of backless benches with leaves for a canopy and the river singing through rhododendrons behind. There was jumping broad and high, and a 100-yard dash and hurdling and throwing the hammer, which the Blight said were not interesting–they were too much like college sports–and she wanted to see the base-ball game and the tournament. And yet Marston was in them all–dogged and resistless–his teeth set and his eyes anywhere but lifted toward the Blight, who secretly proud, as I believed, but openly defiant, mentioned not his name even when he lost, which was twice only.

“Pretty good, isn’t he?” I said.

“Who?” she said indifferently.

“Oh, nobody,” I said, turning to smile, but not turning quickly enough.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked the Blight sharply.

“Nothing, nothing at all,” I said, and straightway the Blight thought she wanted to go home. The thunder of the Declaration was still rumbling in the poplar grove.

“That’s the Hon. Sam Budd,” I said.

“Don’t you want to hear him?”

“I don’t care who it is and I don’t want to hear him and I think you are hateful.”

Ah, dear me, it was more serious than I thought. There were tears in her eyes, and I led the Blight and the little sister home–conscience-stricken and humbled. Still I would find that young jackanapes of an engineer and let him know that anybody who made the Blight unhappy must deal with me. I would take him by the neck and pound some sense into him. I found him lofty, uncommunicative, perfectly alien to any consciousness that I could have any knowledge of what was going or any right to poke my nose into anybody’s business–and I did nothing except go back to lunch–to find the Blight upstairs and the little sister indignant with me.

“You just let them alone,” she said severely.

“Let who alone?” I said, lapsing into the speech of childhood.

“You–just–let–them–alone,” she repeated.

“I’ve already made up my mind to that.”

“Well, then!” she said, with an air of satisfaction, but why I don’t know.

I went back to the poplar grove. The Declaration was over and the crowd was gone, but there was the Hon. Samuel Budd, mopping his brow with one hand, slapping his thigh with the other, and all but executing a pigeon-wing on the turf. He turned goggles on me that literally shone triumph.

“He’s come–Dave Branham’s come!” he said. “He’s better than the Wild Dog. I’ve been trying him on the black horse and, Lord, how he can take them rings off! Ha, won’t I get into them fellows who wouldn’t let me off this morning! Oh, yes, I agreed to bring in a dark horse, and I’ll bring him in all right. That five hundred is in my clothes now. You see that point yonder? Well, there’s a hollow there and bushes all around. That’s where I’m going to dress him. I’ve got his clothes all right and a name for him. This thing is a-goin’ to come off accordin’ to Hoyle, Ivanhoe, Four-Quarters-of-Beef, and all them mediaeval fellows. Just watch me!”