nderstand how there could be anything that he
could not do, nor anything in the world worth having at all that he
could not get, if he tried. So when he told me of Cynthia, I considered
that she belonged to us, and passed on to the next matter claiming my
youthful attention. It never occurred to me that Cynthia could be other
than happy to pass under the suzerainty of my big brother. True, I never
thought very much about it, since it was so plainly a glorious
privilege. Still, why had she made her promise, if she could not keep
her shoulder to it like a man? We did not like it when Ward told us. We
did not think much of women, Ump and Jud and I, except old Liza, who was
another of those splendid Providences. Now it was clear that we were
right.

It all went swimmingly when Ward was by, but no sooner was he stretched
out with a dislocated shoulder from that mysterious blunder of the Black
Abbot, than here was Cynthia trailing over the country with Hawk Rufe.

I stopped at the old Alestock mill where Ben's Run goes trickling into
the Stone Coal, climbed down from El Mahdi and washed my face in the
water, and then passed the rein under my arm and sat down in the road to
await the arrival of my companions. The echo of the horses' feet was
already coming, carried downward across the pasture land, and soon the
head of the Cardinal arose above the little hill behind me, and then the
Bay Eagle, and in a moment more Ump and Jud were sitting with me in the
road.

We usually dismounted and sat on the earth when we had grave matters to
consider. It was an unconscious custom like that which takes the wise
man into the mountains and the lover under the moon. I think the Arab
Sheik long and long ago learned this custom as we had learned
it,--perhaps from a dim conception of some aid to be had from the great
earth when one's heart is very deeply troubled.

I knew well enough that my companions had not passed Woodford without
running the gauntlet of some interrogation, and I waited to hear what
they had to say. I think it was Jud who spoke first, and his face was
full of shadows. "I wouldn't never a believed it of Miss Cynthia," he
began, "I wouldn't never a believed it."

"Don't talk about her," I broke in angrily. "What did Hawk Rufe say?"

Jud studied for a moment as though he were slowly arranging the proper
sequence of some distant memory. Then he went on. "He wanted to know
where I got that big red horse, an' if Mr. Ward's m