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It'll make a millionaire of you as sure as Fate before the next five years have passed!" Layson was taken wholly by surprise. No one had in the least prepared him for anything of this sort. He had supposed the party had come up to see him merely for the pleasure of the trip. "I don't understand," said he. "Keep cool, keep cool!" the Colonel urged. "It is colossal, metaphorically.

"I suh," said this gentleman, "am Cunnel Doolittle Cunnel Sandusky Doolittle, and am looking for this lady's nephew, Mr. Layson, suh. If you can tell me where the youngster is likely to be runnin', now, you will put me under obligations, suh." None, however, knew just how Layson could be reached.

The sooner you gits out of 'em, the better it'll be fer you." Layson stood dumbfounded for a moment. Then he would have said some further word, but the mountaineer, his arm pressed tight against that old game-sack, stalked down the trail. Suddenly Layson understood. "Jealous, by Jove!" he said. "Jealous of little Madge!"

"Well!" he exclaimed beneath his breath in absolute astonishment. "I didn't think it of Frank Layson! What would Barbara " The pair emerged, now, from a gully by-path, and came into view. He tightly shut his jaws and watched them with a peering, eager curiosity. A moment later, and by her wonderful resemblance to her dead mother, he recognized the girl.

Here and there and everywhere were the piccaninnies from Woodlawn, the Layson place, crying the virtues of the mare they worshipped and her owner whom they each and everyone adored, boasting of the wagers they had made, strutting in the consciousness that ere the moment for the great race came "Unc" Neb would gather them together to add zest to the occasion with their brazen instruments and singing.

The mountain-girl shrank from the thought of going, thus, before a multitude, as shyly as would the most highly educated and most socially precise girl in the grand-stand, near, which, now, was filling with the gallantry and beauty of Kentucky; but she did not let her nervous tremors conquer her. There was no other way to save the day for Layson, and, somehow, the day must certainly be saved.

She had come up to the mountains thinking that, among such crude surroundings, her gowns and the undoubted beauty they adorned, would hold the center of the stage, and by contrast, hold Layson quite enthralled; but here, instead, was a brown-faced country maid in grotesque, homemade costume, attracting most of his attention.

"It'll be long afore he'll stir," he muttered. "I'll throw him down into th' gully." He rose, and, going to the side of the ravine, peered over with a fearful curiosity at the brawling torrent, cut into foam-ribbons by a horde of knife-edged rocks. Then he went to Layson and stretched out his hand to grasp his shoulder. Occurred a psychological phenomenon.

Somebody as stumbled on yore still while he was huntin'." Lorey looked at him, wide-eyed, infuriated. Instantly he quite believed what Holton said. It dove-tailed with his own grim hate of Layson that Layson should hate him and try to work his ruin by giving information to the revenuers. "Somebody huntin'!" he exclaimed. "Frank Layson! Say it, say it!"

Layson had come up there to his country to rob him of the girl he loved; now these men were coming with their railroad to change the aspect of the land he had been born to and grown up in, making it a strange place, unfamiliar, unwelcoming and crowded.