nd the tutor clamped his rod under one arm, clutching for the
reins with both hands and kicking for his stirrups with both feet. The
tip of the limber pole beat the horse's flank gently as she struck a
trot, and smartly as she struck into a lope, and so with arms, feet,
saddle-pockets, and fishing-rod flapping towards different points of the
compass, the tutor passed out of sight over Poplar Hill on a dead run.

As soon as he could get over a fit of laughter and catch his breath, the
colonel asked:

"Do you know what he had in those saddle-pockets?"

"No."

"A bathing suit," he shouted; and he went off again.

Not even in a primeval forest, it seemed, would the modest Puritan bare
his body to the mirror of limpid water and the caress of mountain air.

* * * * *

The trouble had begun early that morning, when Gordon, the town
sergeant, stepped from his door and started down the street with no
little self-satisfaction. He had been arraying himself for a full hour,
and after a tub-bath and a shave he stepped, spic and span, into the
street with his head steadily held high, except when he bent it to look
at the shine of his boots, which was the work of his own hands, and of
which he was proud. As a matter of fact, the sergeant felt that he
looked just as he particularly wanted to look on that day--his best.
Gordon was a native of Wise, but that day a girl was coming from Lee,
and he was ready for her.

Opposite the Intermont, a pistol-shot cracked from Cherokee Avenue, and
from habit he started that way. Logan, the captain of the Guard--the
leading lawyer in that part of the State--was ahead of him however, and
he called to Gordon to follow. Gordon ran in the grass along the road to
keep those boots out of the dust. Somebody had fired off his pistol for
fun and was making tracks for the river. As they pushed the miscreant
close, he dashed into the river to wade across. It was a very cold
morning, and Gordon prayed that the captain was not going to be such a
fool as to follow the fellow across the river. He should have known
better,

"In with you," said the captain quietly, and the mirror of the shining
boots was dimmed, and the icy water chilled the sergeant to the knees
and made him so mad that he flashed his pistol and told the runaway to
halt, which he did in the middle of the stream. It was Richards, the
tough from "the Pocket," and, as he paid his fine promptly, they had to
let