suggested, but he remembered as he said
it that his father had left home for the meeting-place before he had
started to take the news to Sydney.

The trail began in a steep acclivity that soon brought the horses to a
walk. When it was surmounted the beasts needs must blow, though they
pressed on willingly enough at a half-minute's end. A fairly level bit
followed along the ridge of the foot-hill they just had climbed. It was
not wide enough for them to travel abreast, and Johnny led with a sharp
trot that made clever avoidance of the stones and roots and stumps that
sprang into sight before him as at the summons of a malignant spirit.

The next upward stretch was over a ledge of rock from which the
winter's rains had washed the soil. A trickling spring kept its surface
constantly wet, and its slippery face brought Johnny to his knees.

Sydney uttered a cry which ordinarily would have been one of pity for
her favorite's pain. Now it was a note of fear lest the fall might mean
delay. But the brave sorrel heaved himself up, and turned across the
path to pant after the exertion.

"Are you all right, Sydney?" came Bob's anxious cry from below, whence
he had seen the accident.

"It was nothing," she called. "Come, Johnny, poor old man!"

She patted his lowered neck, and he bent his hoofs to catch his
toe-calks in the cracks of the rock.

Another fleeting pause at the top rewarded his endeavor, and then a
couple of hundred yards of hardly perceptible upward incline produced
again the swift and ready trot.

Five minutes more of easy climbing brought into view the tobacco barn
which was one of the mountain's landmarks. Beyond it the grade became
much more abrupt, and although it was worn fairly smooth by the sleds
of the men who planted aerial cornfields far up on the highest
clearings, yet its steepness rendered this last half-mile the truly
formidable part of the ascent.

Johnny glanced up it with regretful eye, stopped an instant, took a
long breath, shook himself, and went bravely to his task.

Sydney's every thought was a passionate longing to press on,--to hurry,
to rush, to fly. Her lips grew white when she saw that the hands of her
watch pointed to four minutes of twelve.

"It is not possible to be in time," she agonized. "O God, delay them! O
God, stop them!"

She bent forward over the horse's withers, and stretched upward, as if
to pull him higher by her buoyancy. She was heedless of the stream that
gurg