e ways of Ruth's were usually very sweet to him, but he
did not find them so that night. He made no reply, and looked at her
gravely, without an answering smile. Had anything been needed to fix his
purpose, this gentle raillery would have been more than enough.

He went straight from the door of Cedar House to the stable under the
hill, stopping at his cabin only long enough to get his rifle. The
stable was very dark within, but he knew where to find the pony that he
always rode, and the saddle and bridle which he always used, without
needing to see. And the pony knew him, too, for all the darkness, and
welcomed him with a friendly whinny which said so as plainly as words.
For the boy and the pony were good friends, and moreover they
understood one another perfectly, which is rarely the case with the best
of friends. And then they were both foundlings, and that may have made
another bond between them. The pony had been a wild colt caught in the
forest on the other side of the river. Nothing was known of his
ancestors, although they were supposed by those who knew best, to have
been the worn-out horses of good blood which had been deserted in the
wilderness by the Spaniards. But then everything cruel was laid at the
door of the hated Spaniards in those days, when they had so lately been
forced to take their throttling grasp from the throat of the Beautiful
River. The pony certainly bore no outward mark of noble ancestry. He was
a homely, humble, rough-coated little beast. Yet David liked him better
than all the other finer horses in the judge's stables, notwithstanding
that some of these had real pedigrees; for good horses were already
appearing in Kentucky. The judge allowed David to claim the pony as his
own. Robert Knox was a kind man when he did not forget, and he never
forgot any one without forgetting himself,--first and most of all,--as
he did sometimes.

David always thought of the pony as an orphan like himself, and his own
bruised feelings were very tender toward the friendless little fellow.
He led him from the stable now as a mark of respect and because it was
dark; for he knew that the pony, with a word, would follow him anywhere,
at any time, like a faithful dog. It was not quite so dark outside, and
springing into the saddle, the boy bent down and stroked the rough neck
and the tangled mane that no brush could ever make smooth. The pony
lifted his head to meet the caress, and then these two orphans of the