o there in my curiosity at its
progress, I had detected him crouching in one of the thickest shadows
cast by the surrounding trees. But if any such idea had been in his
mind, it soon vanished, for almost the instant I was in the saddle, he
wheeled himself about and led the way eastward, whipping and spurring
his horse as if it were a devil's ride he contemplated, and not that
easy, restful canter under the rising moon demanded by our excited
spirits and the calm, exquisite beauty of the summer night.

"Are you not coming?" was shouted back to me, as the distance
increased between us.

My answer was to spur my own horse, and as we rode once more side by
side, I could not but note what a wild sort of beauty there was in
him as he thus gave himself up to the force of his feelings and the
restless energy of this harum-scarum ride. "Very different," thought
I, "would the Colonel look on a horse at this hour of night"; and
wondered if Juliet could see him thus she would any longer wound him
by her hesitations, after having driven him by her coquetries to
expect full and absolute surrender on her part.

Did he guess my thoughts, or was his mind busy with the same, that he
suddenly cried in harsh but thrilling tones:

"If I had her where she ought to be, here behind me on this horse, I
would ride to destruction before I would take her back again to the
town and the temptations which beset her while she can hear the sound
of hammer upon stone."

"And you would be right," I was about to say in some bitterness, I
own, when the full realization of the road we were upon stopped me and
I observed instead:

"You would take her yonder where you hope to see her happy, though no
other woman lives within a half-mile of the place."

"No man you should say," quoth Orrin bitterly, lashing his horse till
it shot far ahead of me, so that some few minutes passed before we
were near enough together for him to speak again. Then he said: "She
loads me with promises and swears that she loves me more than all the
world. If half of this is true she ought to be happy with me in a
hovel, while I have a dainty cottage for her dwelling, where the vines
will soon grow and the birds sing. You have not seen it since it has
been finished. You shall see it to-night."

I choked as I tried to answer, and wondered if he had any idea of what
I had to contend with in these rides I seemed forced to take without
any benefit to myself. If he had, he was mer