"Last night," the boy explained, "I--I kind of forgot myself and walked in on the horses in the dark, without speaking to them. I'd forgot to feed before I went to the village. One of them's young yet--and nervous--and----" The other scowled comprehendingly. "And so, just for that, they both went hungry till you came to in the morning and found yourself stretched out on the floor, eh?" Again Young Denny puzzled a moment over the words. He shook his head negatively. "No-o-o," he contradicted slowly. "No, it wasn't as bad as that. Knocked me across the floor and into the wall and made me pretty dizzy and faint for a little while. But I managed to feed them. I--I'd worked them pretty hard in the timber last week." The man in brown puckered his lips sympathetically, whistling softly while he considered the damage which that flying hoof had done, and the utter simplicity of the explanation. "I wonder," he said to himself, "I wonder--I wonder!" And then, almost roughly: "Give me back that card!" Young Denny's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied without a word. The man in brown stood a moment, tapping his lips with the pencil, before he wrote hastily under the scribbled address, cocked his head while he read it through, and handed it back again. The belated train was whistling for the station crossing when he thrust out his pudgy white hand in farewell. "My name's Morehouse," he said, "and I've been called 'Chub' by my immediate friends, a title which is neither dignified nor reverend, and yet I answer to it with cheerful readiness. I tell you this because I have a premonition that we are to meet again. And don't lose that card!" Young Denny's fingers closed over the outstretched hand with a grip that brought the short, fat man in brown up to his toes. Long after the train had crawled out of sight the boy stood there motionless beside the empty truck, reading over and over again the few scrawled words that underran the line of address. "Some of them may have science," it read, "and some of them may have speed, but, after all, it's the man that can take punishment who gets the final decision. Call me up if this ever comes to hand." Which, after all, was not so cryptic as it might have been. CHAPTER VIII That drearily bleak day which was to witness the temporary passing of the last of the line of Boltons from the town which had borne their name longer even than the oldest veteran in the circle of regulars which nightly flanked the cracked wood-stove in the Tavern office could recall, brought with it a succession of thrills not second even to those that had been occasioned by the advent of the plump newspaper man from the metropolis, and all his promised works.