apple from a bough that hung over a stone wall and
with this in her hand she came close to the pasture fence and whistled a
peculiar call. It was answered by a low whinny and a soft thud of hoofs,
and a golden-chestnut hunter thrust a long nose over the bars, flaring
flame-lined nostrils to the touch of her hand. She laid her cheek
against the white thoroughbred forehead and held the apple to the eager
reaching lip, with several teasing withdrawings before she gave it to
its juicy crunching.

"No, Selim," she said as the wide nostrils snuffled over her shoulder,
the begging breath blowing warm against her neck. "No more--and no sugar
to-day. Sugar has gone up two cents a pound."

She let down the top bar of the fence and vaulting over, ran to a stable
and presently emerging with a saddle on her arm, whistled the horse to
her and saddled him. Then opening the gate, she mounted and cantered
down the lane to meet the oncoming riders--a kindly-faced, middle-aged
man, a younger one with dark features and coal-black hair, and two
girls.

Chisholm Lusk spurred in advance and lifted his hat. "I held up the
judge, Shirley," he said, "and made him bring me along. He tells me
there's a fox-hunt on to-morrow; may I come?"

"Pshaw! Chilly," said the judge. "I don't believe you ever got up at
five o'clock in your born days. You've learned bad habits abroad."

"You'll see," he answered. "If my man Friday doesn't rout me out
to-morrow, I'll be up for murder."

They rode an hour, along stretches of sunny highways or on shaded
bridle-paths where the horses' hoofs fell muffled in brown pine-needles
and drooping branches flicked their faces. Then, by a murky way gouged
with brusk gullies, across shelving fields and "turn-rows" in a long
detour around Powhattan Mountain, a rough spur in the shape of an
Indian's head that wedged itself forbiddingly between the fields of
springing corn and tobacco. They approached the Red Road again by a
crazy bridge whose adze-hewn flooring was held in place by wild
grape-vines and weighted down against cloudburst and freshet by heavy
boulders till it dipped its middle like an overloaded buckboard in the
yellow waters of the sluggish stream beneath. On the farther side they
pulled down to breathe their horses. Here the road was like a narrow
ruler dividing a desert from a promised land. On one hand a guttered
slope of marl and pebbles covered with a tatterdemalion forest--on the
other acre upon acre