[Illustration: "Aren't you coming?" young Colonel seemed to say.]
I was flattering myself that the puppy was choosing my company to the hunt, for I always value the approval of a dog. Now I found myself hoping that with a little coddling the young hound would forget the great doings down in the hollow and would stay with me on the ridge-top. But I should have known better. There is an end even to a dog's patience. The place for the strong-limbed is in the thick of the chase. You can't interest a puppy in scenery when his fellows are running a fox.
"Look, Colonel," said I, pointing over the valley, "yonder's where Mary lives, and I suspect that at this very minute she is looking out of the window to this very spot, and——"
The call of a hound floated up from the hollow. Old Captain was on a trail. With a shrill cry young Colonel answered. This was no time to loaf with a crippled soldier. With a long-drawn yelp, a childish imitation of his father's bay, he was off through the bushes. Young Colonel was living. And I was left alone on my log.
But this was my first day of life, too. Some twenty-four years before I had been born, but those years were simply existence. Now I was living. I had a secret. I had hinted at it to young Colonel. Had he stayed, I would have told him more, but like a fool he had gone jabbering off through the bushes, cutting a ludicrous figure, too, I thought, for his body had not yet grown up to his feet and ears, and he carried them off a bit clumsily. Had he stayed I might have told him all, and there never was a bit of news quite so important as that the foolish puppy missed; never a story so romantic as that he might have heard; never in the valley's history an event of such interest. He had scorned it. Now he was with the dog mob down there in the gulch. I could hear them giving tongue, and I knew they were on an old trail. Soon they would be in full cry, but I did not care. It was fine to be in full cry, of course, but from my post on the ridge-top, I could at least keep in sight of the house by the clump of oaks on the hillside. Last week I should have moped and fumed here, and cursed my luck in being bound to a log on a day like this. Now I turned my face to the sunlight and drank in the keen air. Now I whistled as merry a tune as I knew.
"You seem to take well with solitude," came a voice behind me.
Looking about, I saw Robert Weston fighting his way through the thicket.
"I take better to company," I said. "Why have you deserted the others?"