Page:Son of the wind.djvu/55

 watch him take the rise of the rolling ground, and clip into the hollow, and rise again was like watching a flying bird. I saw him, and I named him on the spot, 'Son of the Wind,' because he is the greatest, fastest, loneliest thing that travels over earth—and he's mine!"

Leaning back, his fingers propping his chin, Rader had followed the recital with the same bright, intense gaze with which he might have followed an epic. Now, when the pause came, he smiled and brought down his hand lightly on the arm of his chair. "Diomedes!" he said. His eyes rested on the young man's throat left bare by a soft collar, the lithe line of his back, his hands thrust forward on the table, the sleeves pushed up above the wrists, showing the breadth and sharp lift of the muscle, as if these things were what the story had explained to him.

It was extraordinary to Carron that the real significance of his tale had gone so completely over Rader's head—or perhaps under his feet. "Don't you see," he explained, "I think that horse and this may be the same."

The scholar looked suddenly brought down to earth, and, as always when there, rather at a loss.

"Which one?" he asked blindly.

"The one I lost in Nevada is the one here in these