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and strenuous use, and the one that raced ahead was more beautiful than all of them.

And if the horse shone up in sharp contrast among those behind him, not less did his rider also.

This was a young man, not over seven and twenty, tall, lean as a hound, the broad shoulders beneath his flannel shirt slipping with muscle, the long hands on his pommel slender as a woman's and as fine-grained, his handsome blue eyes in odd contrast to the darkness of his hair and the smooth dark tan of his cheeks.

There were bad faces in that bunch behind him, hard faces and sinister ones, but this man's face was the epitome of joyous recklessness. As he thundered down the street of Santa Leandra with his men behind him, he took off his hat and rode bareheaded and smiling, his keen eyes seeing everything in sight, even the half-hidden old door beneath a lattice, the hound pup that scratched frantically to get under a sill, and the fact that every house had huge, crude locks, as if the inmates trusted neither neighbour nor friend. Neither did he fail to see the girl, standing wide-eyed in her finery beside the way as he pounded down to stop with a rattle and slide before the rack at Hunnewell's.

"Too many horses, boys," he said in a voice as rich as a harp, "tie over there," and he drew his mount aside. This horse was not like the rest. Every line in him bespoke an alien breed, a better blood. It looked out of his quick, intelligent eyes, stood forth in the delicacy of his nostrils, the small-