A breathless nod was her response. All around them repressed

excitement was breaking out; men stood up and shouted; women rose, and

the club house seemed suddenly to blossom like a magic garden of

wind-tossed flowers.

Through the increasing cheering Stull looked on without a sign of

emotion, although affluence or ruin, in the Sanford colours, sat

astride the golden roan.

Suddenly Ruhannah stood up, one hand pressed to the ill-fitting blue

serge over her wildly beating heart. Brandes rose beside her. Not a

muscle in his features moved.

* * * * *

"Gawd!" whispered Stull in his ear, as they were leaving.

"Some killing, Ben!" nodded Brandes in his low, deliberate voice. His

heavy, round face was deeply flushed; Fortune, the noisy wanton, had

flung both arms around his neck. But his slow eyes were continually

turned on the slim young girl whom he was teaching to walk beside him

without taking his arm.

"Ain't she on to us?" Stull had enquired. And Brandes' reply was

correct; Ruhannah never dreamed that it made a penny's difference to

Brandes whether Nick Stoner won or whether it was Deborah Glenn which

the wild-voiced throng saluted.

* * * * *

They did not remain in Saratoga for dinner. They took Stull back to

his hotel on the rumble of the runabout, Brandes remarking that he

thought he should need a chauffeur before long and suggesting that

Stull look about Saratoga for a likely one.

Halted in the crush before the United States Hotel, Stull decided to

descend there. Several men in the passing crowds bowed to Brandes;

one, Norton Smawley, known to the fraternity as "Parson" Smawley, came

out to the curb to shake hands. Brandes introduced him to Rue as

"Parson" Smawley--whether with some sinister future purpose already

beginning to take shape in his round, heavy head, or whether a

perverted sense of humour prompted him to give Rue the idea that she

had been in godly company, it is difficult to determine.

He added that Miss Carew was the daughter of a clergyman and a

missionary. And the Parson took his cue. At any rate Rue, leaning from

her seat, listened to the persuasive and finely modulated voice of

Parson Smawley with pleasure, and found his sleek, graceful presence

and courtly manners most agreeable. There were no such persons in

Gayfield.

She hoped, shyly, that if he were in Gayfield he would call on her

father. Once in a very long while clergymen called on her father, and

their rare visits remained a pleasure to the lonely invalid for

months.

The Parson promised to call, very gravely. It would not have

embarrassed him to do so; it was his business in life to have a

sufficient knowledge of every man's business to enable him to converse

convincingly with anybody.




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