d up some sort of a truce, but I soon saw that it was only a
truce. The two avoided crossing eyes, and as we rode along they talked
to me instead of to each other.

The party met at Mathers Hall. The plan was for us to ride to Luray that
morning, spend most of the afternoon there, and then return to the Hall
for a supper and dance in the evening. The elder ladies took the
carriage, while the rest of us went on horseback, a couple of servants
following in the buckboard with the luncheon. Mose, bare-feet,
linsey-woolsey and all, was brought along to act as guide and he was
fairly purring with contentment at the importance it gave him over the
other negroes. It seems that he had been in the habit of finding his way
around in the cave ever since he was a little shaver, and he knew the
route, Radnor told me, better than the professional guides. He knew it
so well, in fact, that the entire neighborhood was in the habit of
borrowing him whenever expeditions were being planned to Luray.

We left our horses at the village hotel, and after eating a picnic lunch
in the woods, set out to make the usual round of the cave. Luray has
since been lighted with electricity and laid out in cement walks, but
the time of which I am writing was before its exploitation by the
railroad, and the cavern was still in its natural state. Each of us
carried either candles or a torch, and the guides were supplied with
calcium lights which they touched off at intervals whenever there was
any special object of interest. This was the first cavern of any size
that I had ever visited and I was so taken up with examining the rock
formations and keeping my torch from burning my hands that I did not pay
much attention to the disposal of the rest of the party. It took over
two hours to make the round, and we must have walked about five miles.
What with the heavy damp air and the slippery path, I, for one, was glad
to get out into the sunshine again.

I joined the group about Polly Mathers and casually asked if she knew
where Radnor had gone.

"I haven't seen him for some time; I think he must have come out before
us," she replied. "And unless I am mistaken, Colonel Gaylord," she
added, turning to my uncle, "he left my coat on that broken column above
Crystal Lake. I am afraid that he isn't a very good cavalier."

The Colonel, I imagine, had been a very good cavalier in his own youth,
and I do not think that he had entirely outgrown it.

"I will repair hi