“Of course you do, as well as what brought you here with a horse, in so strange a place for a horseback excursion.” “Just so, Harry; same as you know what brought _you_ here with a _pack_ on your back, in so queer a route for a journey, when a smooth road is so near you.” Well knowing Bart's peculiarities, and that it would be useless to try to draw from him the secret of his appearance here until he chose to reveal it, Woodburn, while the other dismounted and told his pony to be cropping the bushes in the mean time, related all that had transpired between himself and the victim of his deeply regretted paroxysm of passion, adding, at the close of his gloomy and self-accusing recital,-- “I first thought, after reaching my house, that I would return and give myself up to the authorities; but knowing, whether Peters should live or die, that I should be a doomed man in this part of the country, I at length brought myself, perhaps wrongly, to try to get out of it undiscovered. And I have now set my course for Boston, to join those there gathering for the approaching struggle for liberty. And Heaven knows with what pleasure I shall now sacrifice my life in her battles.” “Good! that's grand!” warmly responded Bart, who had listened to the other with many a _whew_! of surprise at his accompanying expressions of self-condemnation for killing an antagonist who struck the first blow--“that's grand! Here is what goes with you, Harry; for, between us here, I and Lightfoot are clipping it from a predicament, as well as you.” “So I suspected. But what is it? Let us have _your_ story now.” “Well, Harry, in the first place, do you know this critter I call Lightfoot?” “No; at least I don't now remember to have noticed the animal before.” “Well, it is the colt old skin-flint Turner cheated me out of, last year.” “I think you told me something about it, but don't recollect the particulars; though I had then no doubt, I believe, but the old man wronged you, as I understood you worked very hard for him through the season.”