pag250iloAARON AND TIMOLEON
pag250ilo
AARON AND TIMOLEON
And this was why the fox hunters saw the apparition of a black horse and a headless rider.
"Shall I ride him down, Son of Ben Ali?" snorted the Black Stallion.
"Bear to the right, bear to the right, Grandson of Abdallah," was the reply.
And so the apparition flitted past the young man who had left the double-gates open, and past his companions who were waiting for him near the bars that opened on the big road; flitted past them and disappeared.
Finding that there was no effort made to pursue him, Aaron checked the Black Stallion and listened. He heard the men let down the bars and put them up again, and by that sign he knew they were not patrollers.
Later on in the day, the doubting gentleman, returning from the fox hunt, called by the Abercrombie place and stopped long enough to tell the White-Haired Master of the queer sight he saw in the pasture at dawn.
"The boys were badly scared," he explained to Mr. Abercrombie, "and I tell you it gave me a strange feeling—a feeling that I can best describe by saying that if the earth had opened at my feet and a red flame shot up, it wouldn't have added one whit to my amazement. That's the honest truth."
Mr. Abercrombie could give him no satisfaction, though he might have made a shrewd guess, and Little Crotchet, who could have solved the mystery, had to make an excuse to get out of the way, so that he might have a hearty laugh.
And Aaron, when he came to see the Little Master that night, knew for the first time that he had scared the fox hunters nearly out of their wits.