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THE MAN ON HORSEBACK

And then both would be silent and look guilty. For they were fair and just, and deep down in their hearts they knew that there was no cogent reason for their dislike. On the other hand, Tom was too honest to hide the antipathy he felt, and when he met the Baron he treated him in an abrupt, rasping manner which, putting the odium as it were on him and not on the other, only served to increase his dislike.

"Say, I feel like kicking him," he said one day to Newson Garrett.

"Whom?"

"That foreigner with the unpronounceable, double-barreled name! That German Baron with the hook nose and the British accent and the atmosphere of noble ancestors and the general culpability that goes with it!"

"The ladies like him!" signed Garrett, who had a tender spot in his heart for blue-eyed Virginia Ryan.

"Sure—and. . ." Tom checked himself. "I was going to say that he does the regular Young Lochinvar dope, hands 'em out sob stuff copped from the Ladies' Own Gazette, signed Jessica Pinkney and written by a red-haired Mick with a pipe, three inches of stubble, and an overdue board bill, But it isn't fair. He isn't one of those sighing, ogling, hand-kissing society corsairs. He—and I hate like the deuce to own up to it—he's a sportsman, all right. And it isn't only the ladies that like him. The men, too, have fallen for him like weak-kneed nine pins. . ."

"What are you going to do about it?" inquired the logical assayist.

"Me? Nothing! I am going to shake the dust of Spokane off my feet. Temporarily, that is. I'm going up to the Yankee Doodle Glory and have a squint