ratch of something approaching at a great distance, and only
the fact that my senses had been trained to silences such as these
enabled me to hear it at all. It is always a fascinating thing to stand
silent on a jungle-trail, conjecturing what manner of creature is
pushing toward you under the pendulous moss: perhaps a deer, more
graceful than any dancer that ever cavorted before the footlights, or
perhaps (stranger things have happened) that awkward, snuffling,
benevolent old gentleman, the black bear. This was my life, so no wonder
the match flared out in my hand. And then once more I started to turn
back.

I had got too near the Nealman home, after all. I suddenly recognized
the subdued sound as that of a horse's hoofs in the moss of the trail.
Some one of the proud and wealthy occupants of the old manor house was
simply enjoying a ride in the still woods. But it was high time he
turned back! The marshes of the Ochakee were no place for tenderfeet;
and this was not like riding in Central Park! Some of the quagmires I
had passed already to-day would make short work of horse and rider.

My eye has always been sensitive to motion--in this regard not greatly
dissimilar from the eyes of the wild creatures themselves--and I
suddenly caught a flash of moving color through a little rift in the
overhanging branches. The horseman that neared me on the trail was
certainly gayly dressed! The flash I caught was _pink_--the pink that
little girls fancy in ribbons--and a derisive grin crept to my lips
before I could restrain it. There was no mistaking the fact that I was
beginning to have the woodsman's intolerance for city furs and frills!
Right then I decided to wait.

It might pay to see how this rider had got himself up! It might afford
certain moments of amusement when the still mystery of the Floridan
night dropped over me again. I drew to one side and stood still on the
trail.

The horse walked near. The rider wasn't a man, after all. It was a girl
in the simplest, yet the prettiest, riding-habit that eyes ever laid
upon, and the prettiest girl that had ridden that trail since the woods
were new.

The intolerant grin at my lips died a natural death. She might be the
proud and haughty daughter of wealth, such a type as our more simple
country-dwellers robe with tales of scandal, yet the picture that she
made--astride that great, dark horse in the dappled sunlight of the
trail--was one that was worth coming long miles to