THE MAN IN SADDLE
He did not fail to make his steps audible, thinking if Mrs. Rader had anything to say to him she yet might open her door. But there were no more figures to start up at him and stop him, it seemed, and no more voices to call him back. At last, he was away!
A wind was blowing down through the pines, making the branches creak. At midday the air was keen. Thin white clouds were streaming and perpetually shifting in the sky. Only at the zenith remained a piece of clear blue. He looked up at it and smiled. The thought of Blanche returned to him, not this time as a being made of scruples, but as a pleasure, arms at the end of a journey, a living color fixed for him, for ever in the gray changeable face of life. Now for the sharp adventure!
The chestnut felt the mood of her rider, shivered and danced with sympathetic spirits. "Ah, my pretty girl," Carron murmured caressingly, "if you knew where you were taking me you wouldn't be in such a hurry to get there." His eye was critical upon her. His pet, the pick of herds, aping the thoroughbred, now appeared to him over-narrow in the chest, too hollow in the back, weak in the withers. "Your rival, my dear," he cruelly assured her, "and a lot more than your rival besides!"
This was what he had come for, and what he expected of himself, and it was thus he recognized
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