He stood thinking for a moment. There was Marvin’s still at the Craig house, as Alethea had said, two miles away; the man would be dead of exhaustion before help could come thence. But not a quarter of a mile below, on one of the divergent ridges of Thunderhead, was Bylor’s home. Mink started with affright. The old man was a candidate for office. The certainty of arrest awaited him there, whatever his mission. It was a decision swift as an impulse. It meant twenty years’ imprisonment at hard labor, and he realized it as he sprang upon the bare back of his horse. “I reckon I kin make a break an’ run, or tunnel out, or suthin’,” he said, with his preposterous hopefulness; “leastwise, I can’t leave him thar ter die that-a-way, half drownded and harried ter death by wolves an’ painters an’ buzzards. Ef the darned critter,” he cried out, in a renewal of despair, “would hev jes’ stood up an’ been shot like healthy folks!” Mink never reached his destination. It was not held to be a strange nor an unjustifiable action that young Bylor was led to do. He said afterward that that day, as he made his way home in the midst of the clouds that begirt the mountain, he was affrighted to behold again, evolved from their expressionless monotony, the equestrian figure of the mystic herder that rides on Thunderhead. His nerves were shaken, for before that morning he had seen the “harnt,” and at close quarters. He noted the wildly beckoning hand vague in the mist; he heard, or thought he heard, a shrill, insistent hail; he quickened his pace, pursued by the thunderous hoofs of the spectral steed, riding him down, as he feared. He faced about in desperate terror and fired his rifle. Then he knew what he had done, for the rider lurched from the horse and fell, and the animal dashed past him, running at full speed. It was Mink Lorey whom he found upon the ground,—strong enough only to gasp out his errand; and though Bylor rose instantly to obey his behest and go to succor Gwinnan, Mink was dead before he left. No great loss, the country-side said, and indeed it was suspected for a time that Gwinnan’s straits had resulted from Mink’s wanton mischief. When the facts became known, one or two reflective souls—recognizing in his deed that universal vital element of better possibilities astir within him insistently militant, enlisting every sterling trait common to humanity—were moved to say that he was not all mink.