secretary to give Arcturus and his stable-mate,
Wildair, their exercise on alternate days. On this summer morning
Arcturus was enjoying his turn beneath his rider--who forsooth was
more often in the saddle than Mr. Jefferson himself.

Horse and rider made a picture in perfect keeping as they fared on
toward the little-used forest road which led out Rock Creek way.
Yonder, a few miles distant, was a stone mill owned by an old German,
who sometimes would offer a cup of coffee to an early horseman.
Perhaps this rider knew the way from earlier wanderings thither on
other summer mornings.

Arcturus curveted along and tossed his head, mincing daintily, and
making all manner of pretense at being dangerous, with sudden gusts of
speed and shakings of his head and blowing out of his nostrils--though
all the time the noble bay was as gentle as a dog. Whether or not he
really were dangerous would have made small difference to the young
man who bestrode him, for his seat was that of the born horseman.

They advanced comfortably enough, the rider seemingly less alive to
the joys of the morning than was the animal beneath him. The young
man's face was grave, his mouth unsmiling--a mouth of half Indian
lines, broken in its down-sweeping curve merely by the point of a bow
which spoke of gentleness as well as strength. His head was that of
the new man, the American, the new man of a new world, young and
strong, a continent that had lain fallow from the birth of time.

What burdened the mind of a man like this, of years which should have
left him yet in full attunement with the morning of life and with the
dawn of a country? Why should he pay so little heed to the playful
advances of Arcturus, inviting him for a run along the shady road?

Arcturus could not tell. He could but prance insinuatingly, his ears
forward, his head tossed, his eye now and again turned about,
inquiring.

But though the young man, moody and abstracted, still looked on ahead,
some of his senses seemed yet on guard. His head turned at the
slightest sound of the forest life that came to him. If a twig
cracked, he heard it. If a green nut cut by some early squirrel
clattered softly on the leaves, that was not lost to him.

A bevy of partridges, feeding at dawn along the edge of the forest
path, whirled up in his horse's face; and though he held the startled
animal close, he followed the flight of the birds with the trained eye
of the fowler, and marked well wh