he caught, too, a glimpse of the unshaken
certainty that backed their gray gravity.

"Tomorrow, I reckon. It'll take me all of today to get things fixed up
so I can leave. I'll take this train in the morning. And they--they
ought to have told you at the hotel that it's always a half-hour
late."

Young Denny rose.

"Surely--surely," the chubby man agreed. "Nothing like getting away
with the bell. And--er--there's one other thing. Of course if it's a
little private affair, I'll bow myself gracefully out, but I do
confess to a lot of curiosity concerning that small souvenir." His
eyes traveled to the red welt across the boy's chin. "May I inquire
just how it happened?"

Denny failed to understand him at first; then his finger lifted and
touched the wound interrogatively.

"This?" he inquired.

The man in brown nodded.

"Last night," the boy explained, "I--I kind of forgot myself and
walked in on the horses in the dark, without speaking to them. I'd
forgot to feed before I went to the village. One of them's young
yet--and nervous--and----"

The other scowled comprehendingly.

"And so, just for that, they both went hungry till you came to in the
morning and found yourself stretched out on the floor, eh?"

Again Young Denny puzzled a moment over the words. He shook his head
negatively.

"No-o-o," he contradicted slowly. "No, it wasn't as bad as that.
Knocked me across the floor and into the wall and made me pretty dizzy
and faint for a little while. But I managed to feed them. I--I'd
worked them pretty hard in the timber last week."

The man in brown puckered his lips sympathetically, whistling softly
while he considered the damage which that flying hoof had done, and
the utter simplicity of the explanation.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "I wonder--I wonder!" And then, almost
roughly: "Give me back that card!"

Young Denny's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied without a
word. The man in brown stood a moment, tapping his lips with the
pencil, before he wrote hastily under the scribbled address, cocked
his head while he read it through, and handed it back again.

The belated train was whistling for the station crossing when he
thrust out his pudgy white hand in farewell.

"My name's Morehouse," he said, "and I've been called 'Chub' by my
immediate friends, a title which is neither dignified nor reverend,
and yet I answer to it with cheerful readiness. I tell you this
because I have a premonitio