inging his thoughts back to their
surroundings, he waited for her to speak; but for the moment they seemed
fixed in a little oasis of silence, embodying but them alone. It was the
girl who broke the peculiar stillness.

"I--I--never thought you were like that," she said, almost as if
soliloquizing. "I thought you were out for yourself and nothing else! I
didn't in the least think you could ever feel anything beyond yourself.
You humiliate me--in a way--my stupidity! And I feel like apologizing
for my past unkindness, because I didn't; as you say--because I didn't
at all understand!"

He couldn't quite grasp it all, although her every word had been audible
and distinct. To what did she refer? "Past unkindness?" He strove to
think when she had been unkind to him and where. The baffling sense of
having forgotten something he should have remembered, again disturbed
him and drove him to jest.

"Don't say that!" he cried in pretended alarm. "You make me feel like
the coon who was sentenced for stealing chickens when the judge said,
'You are incorrigible. This is the twenty-seventh time we've had you up
for this heinous, fearsome crime. But now you have gone the limit! You
stole two black hens on the night of April seventh.' Then he stopped and
glared at the nigger who leaned over the dock rail, hopefully, yet
frightened, and said, 'I think you should be sentenced to ninety-nine
years in the penitentiary!' And the nigger thought it over and looked at
the judge, then around the court and gasped, and said, 'Jedge, sah! I
thank my Gawd them chickens was black. It must have been the color, sah,
that made you so kind, because I reckon if they'd been white you'd have
sure had me hanged!'"

But she did not seem to accept it as a joke.

"I have been unkind," she said, with a shake of her head. "I had no idea
you could be like--well--like you are. So there! And besides, I don't
like to be made fun of."

"I'm not making fun of you," he declared. "I'm making fun of myself. I
can't help it. I've a sense of proportion. I know what a mut I am better
than anyone else does. It does me good to admit it whenever I get a
proper chance."

For another interval she studied him, curiously, looked away, and again
turned toward him as if still unconvinced of something, and then said,
"Well, if you were wise, you would keep on being just yourself. You've
something to learn from horses yet. I believe they are always natural,
and unassuming, and