, treading water and striking out with his free arm.

I turned El Mahdi and swam to the Cardinal. When I reached him I caught
the bit on my side, and together Jud and El Mahdi held the exhausted
horse until he gathered his breath and began to swim. Presently, when he
had gotten the air back in his chest, I took the bridle-rein, and Jud,
loosing his hold on the bit, floated down behind the cattle, and struck
out for the shore. I saw him climb the bank among the water beeches when
El Mahdi and the Cardinal came up out of the river at the ferry landing
behind the last bullock.

CHAPTER XVII

ALONG THE HICKORY RIDGES

The human analyst, jotting down in his note-book the motives of men, is
often strangely misled. The master of a great financial house, working
day and night in an office, is not trading away his life for a system of
railroads. Bless you! sir, he would not give a day of those precious
hours for all the steel rails in the world. Nor is my lady spending her
life like water to reach the vantage-point where she may entertain Sir
Henry. That tall, keen-eyed woman with the brains crowded in her head
does not care a snap of her finger if the thing called Sir Henry be
flying to the devil.

Look you a little further in, good analyst. It is the passion of the
chess-player. Each of these is up to the shoulders in the grandest game
you ever dreamed of. Other skilful men and other quick-witted women are
there across the table with Chance a-meddling. The big plan must be
carried out. The iron trumpery and the social folderol are bits of stuff
that have to be juggled about in this business. They have no more
intrinsic value than a bank of fog. Providence made a trifling
miscalculation when it put together the human mind. As the thing works,
there is nothing worth while but the thrills of the game. And these
thrills! How they do play the devil with the candle! Thus it comes about
that when one pulls his life or his string of playthings out of a hole
he does not seem to have made a gain by it. I learned this on the north
bank of the Valley River, listening to Ump's growls as he ran his hands
over the Bay Eagle, and the replies of Jud lying by the Cardinal in the
sun.

Gratitude toward the man helper is about as rare as the splinters of the
true cross. When one owes the debt to Providence, one depends always
upon the statute of limitations to bar it. Here sat these grateful
gentlemen, lately returned by a sort of