e field? Seeing the flag on the stable,
Banneker nodded, and walked over. A groom pointed out a spare, powerful
looking young man with a pink face, startlingly defined by a straight
black mustache and straighter black eyebrows, mounting a light-built
roan, a few rods away. Banneker accosted him.

"Yes, my name is Densmore," he answered the visitor's accost.

"I'm a reporter from The Ledger," explained Banneker.

"A reporter?" Mr. Densmore frowned. "Reporters aren't allowed here,
except on match days. How did you get in?"

"Nobody stopped me," answered the visitor in an expressionless tone.

"It doesn't matter," said the other, "since you're here. What is it; the
international challenge?"

"A rumor has come to us--There's a tip come in at the office--We
understood that there is--" Banneker pulled himself together and put the
direct question. "Is Mrs. Delavan Eyre bringing a divorce suit against
her husband?"

For a time there was a measured silence. Mr. Densmore's heavy brows
seemed to jut outward and downward toward the questioner.

"You came out here from New York to ask me that?" he said presently.

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Who is named as co-respondent? And will there be a defense, or a
counter-suit?"

"A counter-suit," repeated the man in the saddle quietly. "I wonder if
you realize what you're asking?"

"I'm trying to get the news," said Banneker doggedly striving to hold to
an ideal which momentarily grew more sordid and tawdry.

"And I wonder if you realize how you ought to be answered."

Yes; Banneker realized, with a sick realization. But he was not going to
admit it. He kept silence.

"If this polo mallet were a whip, now," observed Mr. Densmore
meditatively. "A dog-whip, for preference."

Under the shameful threat Banneker's eyes lightened. Here at least was
something he could face like a man. His undermining nausea mitigated.

"What then?" he inquired in tones as level as those of his opponent.

"Why, then I'd put a mark on you. A reporter's mark."

"I think not."

"Oh; you think not?" The horseman studied him negligently. Trained to
the fineness of steel in the school of gymnasium, field, and tennis
court, he failed to recognize in the man before him a type as
formidable, in its rugged power, as his own. "Or perhaps I'd have the
grooms do it for me, before they threw you over the fence."

"It would be safer," allowed the other, with a smile that surprised the
athlete.

"