if Ah know!"

"What answer did you send?"

"Ah told Bud to tell him Ah'd attend to it when the mud dried."

"Good. That'll give you two or three days to find out what's the matter
with him. Oh, what a joke, what a joke!"

Bob subsided into a chair, overcome with joy at the idea of his father
as a participant in a formal duel.

"Let me know how it comes on, won't you, sir? May I be your second?"

"No," returned the Doctor, hunting his place in the discarded novel.
"Ah'm laying off to have you governor some day, and Ah don't want to
have you disqualified this early!"

Bob grinned appreciatively, and again explored the clouds.

"I'm going to see Sydney. May I show her this?"

Bob took his father's "H'm" for an assent, and went out to saddle his
horse.

Von Rittenheim, sitting before the fire with _Wallenstein's Lager_ on
his knee, but with eyes bent upon the flames that burst with tiny
explosions from the logs, and with mind wandering far from thoughts of
Schiller,--von Rittenheim was waiting with what patience he could
command for Bud's return.

With the falling of the wind at dusk the rain ceased. Friedrich lighted
his lamp and opened his door to look up the road, a view not commanded
by his single window.

He prepared his evening meal of coffee and bread and the batter-cakes
that he had learned to like and then to make in this land of the
frying-pan. Still Bud did not come. At eleven o'clock he went to bed,
for he knew that no countryman, unless he were going for the doctor,
would be abroad at that hour, with such mud under foot.

The next day's noon brought no news of the recreant messenger, and von
Rittenheim went to the Yarebroughs' cabin in search of him.

"He ain' home," Melissa said, in the raised voice that she felt to be
necessary to the German's understanding of her English. "He's gone to
shoot cotton-tails. Ah 'low Ah'll make you-all a pie, 'f ye like," she
added, offering this practical sympathy to the suffering that she saw
written on his face.

"A pie of cotton-tails! Delightful! It will give me pleasure," said von
Rittenheim, politely, with vague notions of birds floating through his
brain. "Did he--Bud--br-ring no message for me yesterday in the
afternoon?"

"No. He said the Doctor 'lowed he'd 'tend to hit--what yo' letter was
about--when the mud dried, 'n Bud reckoned that wasn' no message, 'n
hit wasn' no use goin' over to tell you jus' that."

"When the mud dried," repeated Fried