mountains. I lost him only a couple of hundred miles from here. My horse was separated from his herd, so is this one. Then, word for word, the description tallies. At least, I hope"—he looked. anxiously at Rader—"that you are going to tell me it does."
"I? But," Rader objected, "I have never seen such a thing!" The idea of it seemed almost to frighten him.
Carron looked at him hard. It was not possible to construe those deep-set, clear, blue eyes as anything but candid. "But you know some one who has?"
Rader was silent.
"One thing," Carron persisted. "You do know for a fact that there is such a creature?"
The scholar looked down. "Do we, any of us, know for a fact a thing we have never seen?"
The blood flew to Carron's face. He felt held back, baffled, played with! For Rader's manner, with all its frank simplicity, was not the manner of ignorance. "I think you do know quite well," Carron said, "but for some reason you prefer not to say."
"For a good reason," Rader answered. He leaned his head back against his chair, and plunged his hands in his capacious pockets. His long, gray
44
