Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/118

 and pointed through the beech trees, and I saw a bay horse tied to a sapling. The horse stood with his legs wide apart and his head down.

"The horse is asleep," said Abner; "it has been ridden all night. We must find the rider."

I was now alive with interest. The old story of the robbery floated before me in romantic colors. What innocent person would come here by stealth, ride his horse all night and then hide it in the woods? Moreover, as Abner said, this horse had been to the sheriff's house before today; and it had been there before the house was burned—because it had started to enter the old lane and had been turned back by its rider. We were all familiar with such striking examples of memory in horses. A horse, having once gone over a road and entered at a certain gate, will follow that road on a second trip and again enter that gate.

Then I remembered the old horsetrack that had preceded this one, and the solution of this thing appeared before me. The story had gone about that two men had robbed the sheriff and these evidences tallied with that story. Two men had ridden into that pasture; that one track was older was because one of the men had gone to tell the other to meet him here—had ridden back—and the other had followed. The horse of the first robber was doubtless concealed deeper in the wood. And why had they returned? That was clear enough—they had 105