, the fast Morgan mare, came up to the front-door,
with the wheels of the new, light chaise flashing behind her in the
moonlight. The Doctor drove Dick forty miles at a stretch that night,
out of the limits of the State.

"Do you want money?" he said, before he left him.

Dick told him the secret of his golden belt.

"Where shall I send your trunk after you from your uncle's?"

Dick gave him a direction to a seaport town to which he himself was
going, to take passage for a port in South America.

"Good-bye, Richard," said the Doctor. "Try to learn something from
to-night's lesson."

The Southern impulses in Dick's wild blood overcame him, and he kissed
the old Doctor on both cheeks, crying as only the children of the sun
can cry, after the first hours in the dewy morning of life. So Dick
Venner disappears from this story. An hour after dawn, Cassia pointed
her fine ears homeward, and struck into her square, honest trot, as
if she had not been doing anything more than her duty during her four
hours' stretch of the last night.

Abel was not in the habit of questioning the Doctor's decisions.

"It's all right," he said to Mr. Bernard. "The fellah's Squire Venner's
relation, anyhaow. Don't you want to wait here, jest a little while,
till I come back? The' 's a consid'able nice saddle 'n' bridle on a dead
hoss that's layin' daown there in the road, 'n' I guess the' a'n't no
use in lettin' on 'em spile,--so I'll jest step aout 'n' fetch 'em
along. I kind o' calc'late 't won't pay to take the cretur's shoes 'n'
hide off to-night,--'n' the' won't be much iron on that hoss's huffs an
haour after daylight, I'll bate ye a quarter."

"I'll walk along with you," said Mr. Bernard;--"I feel as if I could get
along well enough now."

So they set off together. There was a little crowd round the dead
mustang already, principally consisting of neighbors who had adjourned
from the Doctor's house to see the scene of the late adventure. In
addition to these, however, the assembly was honored by the presence of
Mr. Principal Silas Peckham, who had been called from his slumbers by
a message that Master Langdon was shot through the head by a
highway-robber, but had learned a true version of the story by this
time. His voice was at that moment heard above the rest,--sharp, but
thin, like bad cider-vinegar.

"I take charge of that property, I say. Master Langdon 's actin' under
my orders, and I claim that hoss and all that's on him.