this badge of idiocy. And to think that it's got to be for a whole
month longer! A year's a mighty long while at best, but a year in
company with a full set of red whiskers is an eternity."

The road out of Tafelberg wound upward among tall trees toward the
pass that would lead him across the next valley on his way to the
Old Forest, where he hoped to find some excellent shooting.
All his life Barney had promised himself that some day he should
visit his mother's native land, and now that he was here he found it
as wild and beautiful as she had said it would be.

Neither his mother nor his father had ever returned to the little
country since the day, thirty years before, that the big American
had literally stolen his bride away, escaping across the border but
a scant half-hour ahead of the pursuing troop of Luthanian cavalry.
Barney had often wondered why it was that neither of them would ever
speak of those days, or of the early life of his mother, Victoria
Rubinroth, though of the beauties of her native land Mrs. Custer
never tired of talking.

Barney Custer was thinking of these things as his machine wound up
the picturesque road. Just before him was a long, heavy grade, and
as he took it with open muffler the chugging of his motor drowned
the sound of pounding hoof beats rapidly approaching behind him.

It was not until he topped the grade that he heard anything unusual,
and at the same instant a girl on horseback tore past him. The speed
of the animal would have been enough to have told him that it was
beyond the control of its frail rider, even without the added
testimony of the broken bit that dangled beneath the tensely