es and hoofs; and yet, when fairly
on the road, never broke the swift precision of his course.

"He's got a fine horse there," Abner Hautville said, in his emphatic
bass, as he watched them out of sight; and he further declared that
for his part he would be willing to trade the roan for him. Then the
boy Richard turned upon him, with a cry that was something between a
sob and an oath: "Yes, trade off the roan and all we've got left to
him, I'll warrant ye will!" he choked out. Then he was gone, pelting
off madly across the fields, with his bold and innocent young heart,
that had as yet known no fiercer passion than this for his sister,
all aflame with grief and angry jealousy, as of one who sees his best
haled off before his eyes, and still with awed submission to a power
which he recognizes and understands not.

Chapter XXIX

As Burr and Madelon, setting forth on their wedding-journey, drove
down the village street, they met many whom they knew; and had it not
been for their self-engrossment they could not have failed to notice
and wonder at the cold greetings they received, and the many averted
faces which greeted them not at all.

Indeed, Burr did remark upon it when they met Daniel Plympton, who
nodded with a surly air and turned his fat and pleasant countenance
resolutely away, with a gesture that seemed to belie his own
identity.

"What's come across Dan'l?" he said, laughing, for at that time
coldness from the outside world seemed but provocative of amusement.
Then he sang out gayly to the Morgan horse, and they flew along the
road, under the outreaching branches, red and gold and russet, past
old landmarks and houses and more familiar faces which bore strange
looks towards them, and yet surprised them not, for a strangeness was
over all the old sights and ways for them both. To the bride and
groom, riding through the village where they had been born and bred,
and whence all their earthly imaginations had sprung, came an
experience like a resurrection. They saw it all: the paths their feet
had trodden, the doors they had entered, the friends they had known
from childhood, but all seemed no longer the same, since their own
conditions of life had changed; and change in one's self is the vital
spring of change in all besides.

As they rode along old associations lost their holds over them in
their new world, which was the outcome of the old, and would in its
turn wax old again. Burr looked at his own