reckon I don't have to say I'm obliged to you. The
quicker the start I get now, the better."

The old man settled back again with leisurely calm. "Go right on yore
way, son, an' I'll tarry hyar a spell so nairy person won't connect my
goin'-out with your'n."

As he passed the cashier's grating Henderson nodded to Black Tom
Carmichael.

"Does ye aim ter start acrost ther mounting?" politely inquired the
chief lieutenant of Kinnard Towers, and Jerry smiled.

"Yes, I'm going to the livery stable right now to get Lone Stacy's
mule."

"I wishes ye a gay journey then," the henchman assured him, using the
stereotyped phrase of well-wishing, to the wayfarer.

Gorgeous was the flaunting color of autumn as Henderson left the edges
of the ragged town behind him. He drank in the spicy air that swept
across the pines, and the beauty was so compelling that for a time his
danger affected him only as an intoxicating sort of stimulant under
whose beguiling he reared air-castles. It would be, he told himself,
smiling with fantastic pleasure, a delectable way to salvage the hard
practicalities of life if he could have a home here, presided over by
Blossom, and outside an arena of achievement. In the market-places of
modern activity, he could then win his worldly triumphs and return here
as to a quiet haven. One phase would supply the plaudits of Caesar--and
one the tranquil philosophy of Plato.

But with evening came the bite of frost. The same crests that had been
brilliantly colorful began to close in, brooding and sinister, and the
reality of his danger could no longer be disavowed.

Twilight brought the death of all color save the lingering lemon of the
afterglow, and now he had come to the head of Little Ivy, where Uncle
Israel had said travel would become precarious. Here he should abandon
his mule and cut across the tangles, but a little way ahead lay a disk
of pallid light in the general choke of the shadows--a place where the
creek had spread itself into a shallow pool across the road. The hills
and woods were already merged into a gray-blue silhouette, but the
water down there still caught and clung to a remnant of the afterglow
and dimly showed back the inverted counterparts of trees which were
themselves lost to the eye.

He might as well cross that water dry-shod, he reflected, and dismount
just beyond.

But, suddenly, he dragged hard at the bit and crouched low in his
saddle. He had seen a reflection which belon