ses, where they subjected Dolly to a
rigid examination that disclosed nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth,
body--everything was as it should be. The saddle and saddle-cloth were
innocent of bur or sticker; the back was smooth and unbroken. They
searched for sign of snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but found
nothing.

"Whatever it was, it was subjective, that much is certain," Chris said.

"Obsession," Lute suggested.

They laughed together at the idea, for both were twentieth-century
products, healthy-minded and normal, with souls that delighted in
the butterfly-chase of ideals but that halted before the brink where
superstition begins.

"An evil spirit," Chris laughed; "but what evil have I done that I
should be so punished?"

"You think too much of yourself, sir," she rejoined. "It is more likely
some evil, I don't know what, that Dolly has done. You were a mere
accident. I might have been on her back at the time, or Aunt Mildred, or
anybody."

As she talked, she took hold of the stirrup-strap and started to shorten
it.

"What are you doing?" Chris demanded.

"I'm going to ride Dolly in."

"No, you're not," he announced. "It would be bad discipline. After what
has happened I am simply compelled to ride her in myself."

But it was a very weak and very sick mare he rode, stumbling and
halting, afflicted with nervous jerks and recurring muscular spasms--the
aftermath of the tremendous orgasm through which she had passed.

"I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after all that has
happened," Lute said, as they rode into camp.

It was a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched in a grove of
towering redwoods through whose lofty boughs the sunshine trickled down,
broken and subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart from the main
camp were the kitchen and the servants' tents; and midway between was
the great dining hall, walled by the living redwood columns, where fresh
whispers of air were always to be found, and where no canopy was needed
to keep the sun away.

"Poor Dolly, she is really sick," Lute said that evening, when they had
returned from a last look at the mare. "But you weren't hurt, Chris, and
that's enough for one small woman to be thankful for. I thought I knew,
but I really did not know till to-day, how much you meant to me. I could
hear only the plunging and struggle in the thicket. I could not see you,
nor know how it went with you."

"My thoughts were of you," Chris answered, a