s is madness. It
can't be----"

"He did cross in the steerage," I said. "What of it? He is the best,
and handsomest man I ever saw, and there's no finer gentleman than he;
you can ask Sally if there is, for she knows him."

"And thoroughly approves of him," Sally finished, taking my hand.
"Duke, I assure you Betty is to be congratulated. I understand that the
Duchess was not averse to her marrying an American, and the one she has
chosen is of the very best type."

"I beg your pardon, Miss Woodburn, but hang the type," said Stan, who
never did get on with Sally. "It's absolutely impossible that my sister
should marry such a person, and you ought to have known better than to
encourage her. This is a hundred times worse than I thought when I
flung up the best shoot of the season to come and fetch you, Betty. You
and I were always by way of being pals, but I agree with the Mater now;
you've behaved disgracefully, and as for the man, whoever he is----"

"Here he comes to speak for himself," cut in Sally, squeezing my hand
hard.

There was a sound in the distance; voices shouting, but not the voice I
loved. We all looked, and a black horse with a man on his back sprang
into sight, like a rocket gone wrong. It was Jim, looking more
beautiful than any picture of a man ever painted, his face transported
with the joy of battle and triumph, and that fiend in horse shape under
him doing all he knew to kill.

It was a terrible and yet a splendid thing to see, that struggle. I
hadn't known how I adored Jim, and how I admired him, till I saw him
with that smile on his face, sitting the black devil as if he were one
with him in spite of the brute's murderous plunges.

The two shot past the house like a streak of lightning, then wheeled
back again, the horse clearing a ditch and a five-barred fence from one
meadow into another; but he didn't jump in spite of Jim; rather was it
in spite of himself. Then there was a series of mad buck jumpings,
leaps into the air, and downward plunges. The beast sat on his
haunches, and then reared up with a great bound, to waltz on his hind
legs and paw the air, snorting. But still Jim smiled and kept his seat
without the least apparent effort.

[Illustration: "_Jim smiled and kept his seat without the least
apparent effort_"]

"Jove! that fellow can ride," muttered Stan, taken out of himself by
his man's admiration for a man.

"It's Jim Brett, _my_ Jim Brett," I cried. "What do you think of