"It was not my hand, I swear it. I was not even thinking of him. He was going

up with a fairly loose rein, as a matter of course."
"I should have seen it, had you done it," Lute said. "But it was all done

before you had a chance to do anything. It was not your hand, not even your
unconscious hand."

"Then it was some invisible hand, reaching out from I don't know where."
He looked up whimsically at the sky and smiled at the conceit.

Martin stepped forward to receive Dolly, when they came into the stable end of
the grove, but his face expressed no surprise at sight of Chris coming in on

foot. Chris lingered behind Lute for moment.
"Can you shoot a horse?" he asked.

The groom nodded, then added, "Yes, sir," with a second and deeper nod.
"How do you do it?"

"Draw a line from the eyes to the ears--I mean the opposite ears, sir. And
where the lines cross--"

"That will do," Chris interrupted. "You know the watering place at: the second
bend. You'll find Ban there with a broken back."

******
"Oh, here you are, sir. I have been looking for you everywhere since dinner.

You are wanted immediately."
Chris tossed his cigar away, then went over and pressed his foot on its

glowing; fire.
"You haven't told anybody about it?--Ban?" he queried.

Lute shook her head. "They'll learn soon enough. Martin will mention it to
Uncle Robert tomorrow."

"But don't feel too bad about it," she said, after a moment's pause, slipping
her hand into his.

"He was my colt," he said. "Nobody has ridden him but you. I broke him myself.
I knew him from the time he was born. I knew every bit of him, every trick,

every caper, and I would have staked my life that it was impossible for him to
do a thing like this. There was no warning, no fighting for the bit, no

previous unruliness. I have been thinking it over. He didn't fight for the
bit, for that matter. He wasn't unruly, nor disobedient. There wasn't time. It

was an impulse, and he acted upon it like lightning. I am astounded now at the
swiftness with which it took place. Inside the first second we were over the

edge and falling.
"It was deliberate--deliberate suicide. And attempted murder. It was a trap. I

was the victim. He had me, and he threw himself over with me. Yet he did not
hate me. He loved me . . . as much as it is possible for a horse to love. I am

confounded. I cannot understand it any more than you can understand Dolly's
behavior yesterday."

"But horses go insane, Chris," Lute said. "You know that. It's merely
coincidence that two horses in two days should have spells under you."

"That's the only explanation," he answered, starting off with her. "But why am
I wanted urgently?"

"Planchette."
"Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience to me. Somehow I missed it when

it was all the rage long ago."
"So did all of us," Lute replied, "except Mrs. Grantly. It is her favorite

phantom, it seems."
"A weird little thing," he remarked. "Bundle of nerves and black eyes. I'll

wager she doesn't weigh ninety pounds, and most of that's magnetism."
"Positively uncanny . . . at times." Lute shivered involuntarily. "She gives

me the creeps."
"Contact of the healthy with the morbid," he explained dryly. "You will notice

it is the healthy that always has the creeps. The morbid never has the creeps.
It gives the. That's its function. Where did you people pick her up, anyway?"

"I don't know--yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I think--oh, I
don't know. At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, and of course had to

visit Aunt Mildred. You know the open house we keep.
They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave entrance

to the dining room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen the stars.
Candles lighted the tree-columned space. About the table, examining the

Planchette contrivance, were four persons. Chris's gaze roved over them, and
he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused for a moment on Lute's Aunt

Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe middle age and genial with the
gentle buffets life had dealt them. He passed amusedly over the black-eyed,

frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth person, a portly,
massive-headed man, whose gray temples belied the youthful solidity of his

face.
"Who's that?" Chris whispered.

"A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That's why you didn't see him at dinner.
He's only a capitalist--water-power-long-distance-electricity-transmitter, or

something like that."
"Doesn't look as though he could give an ox points on imagination."

"He can't. He inherited his money. But he knows enough to hold on to it and
hire other men's brains. He is very conservative."

"That is to be expected," was Chris's comment. His gaze went back to the man
and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside him. "Do you

know," he said, "it came to me with a shock yesterday when you told me that
they had turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated. I met them

afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear and trembling--and to-day, too.
And yet I could see no difference from of old."

"Dear man," Lute sighed. "Hospitality is as natural to them as the act of
breathing. But it isn't that, after all. It is all genuine in their dear

hearts. No matter how severe the censure they put upon you when you are
absent, the moment they are with you they soften and are all kindness and

warmth. As soon as their eyes rest on you, affection and love come bubbling
up. You are so made. Every animal likes you. All people like you. They can't

help it. You can't help it. You are universallylovable, and the best of it is
that you don't know it. You don't know it now. Even as I tell it to you, you

don't realize it, you won't realize it--and that very incapacity to realize it
is one of the reasons why you are so loved. You are incredulous now, and you

shake your head; but I know, who am your slave, as all people know, for they
likewise are your slaves.

"Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them. Mark the affection, almost
maternal, that will well up in Aunt Mildred's eyes. Listen to the tones of

Uncle Robert's voice when he says, 'Well, Chris, my boy?' Watch Mrs. Grantly
melt, literally melt, like a dewdrop in the sun.

"Take Mr. Barton, there. You have never seen him before. Why, you will invite
him out to smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have gone to bed--you, a

mere nobody, and he a man of many millions, a man of power, a man obtuse and
stupid like the ox; and he will follow you about, smoking; the cigar, like a

little dog, your little dog, trotting at your back. He will not know he is
doing it, but he will be doing it just the same. Don't I know, Chris? Oh, I

have watched you, watched you, so often, and loved you for it, and loved you
again for it, because you were so delightfully and blindlyunaware of what you

were doing."
"I'm almost bursting with vanity from listening to you," he laughed, passing

his arm around her and drawing her against him.
"Yes," she whispered, "and in this very moment, when you are laughing at all

that I have said, you, the feel of you, your soul,--call it what you will, it
is you,--is calling for all the love that is in me."

She leaned more closely against him, and sighed as with fatigue. He breathed a
kiss into her hair and held her with firm tenderness.

Aunt Mildred stirred briskly and looked up from the Planchette board.
"Come, let us begin," she said. "It will soon grow chilly. Robert, where are

those children?"
"Here we are," Lute called out, disengaging herself.

"Now for a bundle of creeps," Chris whispered, as they started in.
Lute's prophecy of the manner in which her lover would be received was

realized. Mrs. Grantly, unreal, unhealthy, scintillant with frigid magnetism,
warmed and melted as though of truth she were dew and he sun. Mr. Barton

beamed broadly upon him, and was colossally gracious. Aunt Mildred greeted him
with a glow of fondness and motherly kindness, while Uncle Robert genially and

heartily demanded, "Well, Chris, my boy, and what of the riding?"
But Aunt Mildred drew her shawl more closely around her and hastened them to

the business in hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On the paper, rifling
on three supports, was a small triangular board. Two of the supports were