“Thar’s yer way, stranger,” said Marvin, pausing on the rise and pointing down the road. It was visible only a few rods in the mist, dreary and deserted, with deep ditches, heavily washed by the rain, on either hand; it might seem to lead to no fair spaces, no favored destination where one might hope to be. But Harshaw drew up his mare, and gazed along it with kindling eyes. His felt hat drooped in picturesque curves about his dense yellow hair, soaked like his beard, to a darker hue. His closely buttoned coat had a military suggestion. His heavy figure was imposing on horseback. He flushed with sudden elation. Alack! he saw more trooping down that prosaic dirt road than the mist, hastily scurrying; than the progress of the wind in the swaying of the stunted cedars, clinging to the gashed and gully-washed embankments; than the last trickling stragglers of the storm. He did not notice, or he did not care, that the two men had remarked his silence, his evident absorption. He glanced cursorily at them, as they sat regarding him,—one on the little lank mule, his partner on the big lean one, both drenched, and forlorn, and poverty-stricken, and humble of aspect. The politician’s mare, perhaps recognizing the road down into Kildeer County, where she had spent the first frisky years of her toilsome pilgrimage, showed a new spirit, and caracoled as Harshaw rode up to the two men to offer his hand. “Farewell, stranger,” they said; and in the old-fashioned phrase of the primitive Plain People, “Farewell,” he replied. They stood looking after him, hardly understanding what they lacked, what they had expected, as the mare, with a mincing, youthful freshness, cantered a little way along the grassy margin of the road, above the rivulets in the ditches, surging twelve or fourteen feet below. Presently Harshaw paused, yet unobscured by the mist which had gathered about him, and glanced over his shoulder,—not to thank them for such aid and comfort as they had given him. “Gentlemen,” he said, a little ill at ease because of the restive mare, “I must thank you for the story you told me. You don’t know how much good it did me. A pretty little story, with a pretty little hero. A very _pretty_ little story, indeed.” He bent his roseate, dimpled smile upon them, and waved his hand satirically; with a bound the mare disappeared in the mist, leaving the grave, saturnine mountaineers staring after him, and listening to the measured hoof-beat of his invisible progress till it died in the distance. Then they looked at each other. “Sam,” said Jeb, when they had turned again into their fastnesses, where they could ride only in single file, “I dunno ef we-uns done right las’ night. This worl’ would be healthier ef that man war out’n it.”