“I oughtn’t ter go ter see Lethe,” he said to himself. “I ought jes’ ter hustle over inter North Carliny, whar they dunno me, an’ git in with some o’ them folks ez lives lonesome, the herders, or them Injuns at Quallatown, till the sher’ff gits tired o’ huntin’ fur me. Nobody ’lows but what I’m dead ’cept Mis’ Purvine, an’ she ain’t a-goin’ ter tell on me. I dunno ’bout Lethe; mebbe she’ll ’low ’tain’t right, ’specially sence she air so powerful pleased with the jedge. I’ll git cotched sure ef I keep a-roamin’ ’round hyar like a painter, or that thar harnt o’ a herder ez rides on Thunderhead.” With the words there flashed upon him a new interpretation of Ben Doaks’s sudden flight. He recollected the significance of an equestrian figure here, strangely silent, looming in the mist. As he looked about him, catching vague glimpses of the neighboring peaks, he recognized the slopes of Thunderhead. “Ben mus’ hev been over ter s’arch fur strays, an’ I reckon ye air one of ’em, Grasshopper,” he said. His lips were curving, and his eyes brightening beneath the brim of the old wool hat. His prudent resolves vanished. He leaned forward and deftly divested the horse of the bell. He tossed his head gayly as he struck his heels against the flanks of the animal with an admonition to get up. “Ef I don’t ride up thar an’ skeer them herders on Thunderhead inter fits, I’m the harnt Ben takes me fur, that’s all.” That misty morning was long remembered on Thunderhead. To the herders, busy with their simple, leisurely, bucolic avocation on the great elevated pastures, as aloof from the world, as withdrawn from mundane influence, as if they herded on lunar mountains, there appeared, veiled with the mist and vague with a speedy gait, the traditional phantom horseman: more distinct than they could have imagined, more personally addressing its presence to the spectators, silently waving its hand, and once leaning forward and clutching at the empty air, as if it would fain reach them, and once assuming an aggressive aspect and leveling an unseen weapon. The cattle had not all arrived at their summer pastures from the coves and the “flat woods.” To-day young Bylor, whose father was a farmer on the slopes below, had driven up a “bunch” of cows, and while he was standing quite alone at some distance from the cabin, engaged in readjusting a brass tag which had been lost from the horn of one of the animals, he heard the sound of an approach, and glanced about him in the fleecy white nullity that had taken the place of the erased world. He did not recognize in the dim figure of the horseman the terrible ghostly herder, the steed rearing and plunging, the erect figure looming gigantic, merging with no distinct outlines into the enveloping uncertainty of the mist. He stood stolidly gazing for a moment; then he hailed it. “Howdy, stranger!” he cried.