The others laughed. Then Helen, deciding upon another arrangement, instructed him to drive forward. She could see her father in town, she explained to the others, and there also, after the exchange of money, the Mexican could purchase another horse. Which closed the matter. The Mexican started the team forward, while the others fell in alongside, ranging themselves on either side. Thus they journeyed into town--a strange cavalcade--Pat prancing, the mare drooping, the Mexican visibly pleased, the others gratified by their unexpected success. In town they turned into a side street, and there Helen left them, going off in the direction of her father's office. When she returned, the Judge was with her. He read the Mexican a brief but stern lecture on the law pertaining to the recovery of lost property, and closed the deal. Whereupon the wood-hauler unharnessed Pat, bestowed him smilingly upon Helen, and took himself off, evidently in quest of another horse, for he headed straight as a plumb-line for the city pound. * * * * * Pat was home again. He knew it from many things--the white fence, the clean stable, the Mexican hostler with broom in hand. And though he was at home where he wanted to be, yet he found himself filled with vague uneasiness. After a time he sought to relieve it. He made his way into the stable, but he found no relief there. He returned to the corral, and began slowly to circle inside the fence, but neither did this relieve him. Finally he took up his old stand in the sunlit corner, where he fell to listening with ears and eyes attentive to least sounds. But even this did not relieve him. Nor would anything ever relieve him. Never would he find absolute solace from his inner disquiet. For what he sought and could not find, what he listened for and could not hear, was another of those sounds which had relieved the tedium of his brief stay in the mountains, the friendly nicker of the aged mare, gone to toil out her life in the racking treadmill between town and mountain. CHAPTER XI LOVE REJECTED Pat had just been clipped. And never was there a horse nearer perfection! Shorn of all hair, his splendid physique, now in fullest maturity, stood out clean-cut and fascinating.