After leaving college, he immediately took up journalistic work in Louisville with _The Evening Post_, subsequently going with the _Courier-Journal_, with which paper he remained several years, gaining wide journalistic experience as legislative correspondent, dramatic critic, city editor and editorial writer. In 1892 Mr. Altsheler followed the almost inevitable ambition of the American with pronounced literary attainments, migrating to the broad and inviting field of the metropolis, since which time he has successively filled responsible positions with the _New York World_, being at present in charge of its tri-weekly edition. About nine years ago Mr. Altsheler turned his attention seriously to fiction, since which time he has produced no less than ten novels, in many of which he has drawn largely upon his own extensive personal experiences as a journalist. His first book was “The Sun of Saratoga,” while his latest is “Guthrie of the Times,” a contemporary romance with a strong political flavor. He has now in press “The Candidate,” also a novel of the day, and likewise treating of political life, this time in the West instead of in Kentucky. THE LOST HERD. By Joseph A. Altsheler. Redfield parted the twining bushes with both hands, and pushed his body through the cleft, while I stood by to see the issue. He took but a single step and then threw himself back like a soldier who would escape a bullet, his face, now turned toward me, showing a yellowish hue in the moonlight. He raised his hand and wiped his damp forehead, while I gazed at him in silence, seeing fear, sudden and absolute, in his gaze, as if death had faced him, with no warning. We stood so, for a few moments, until the terror died slowly in his eyes, when he took another step back, and laughing a little, in a nervous way, pointed before him with a long forefinger. I advanced, but he put a restraining hand upon my shoulder, and bade me take only a single step. I obeyed and, with his hand still on my shoulder, looked down a drop of a thousand feet, steep like the side of a house, the hard stone of the wall showing gray and bronze, where the light of the moon fell upon it. I saw at the bottom masses of foliage like the tops of trees, and running through them a thread of silver, which I felt sure was the stream of a brook or creek. We were looking into a green valley, and now I understood Redfield’s terror, when instinct or quickness of eye, or both, saved him from the next step, which would have taken him to sure death. The valley looked pleasant, with green trees and running water, and I suggested that it would furnish a good camp to us who were weary of mountains and ravines and stony paths.