and someone has built a beautiful long low house with ivy-clad verandas."

How nicely the boy talked and how prettily he waved his slender arm, and I kept on gazing at him in admiration.

"Also," he went on, "there is a smooth lawn about the house with flower beds and shrubbery, a driveway leading to the road along the lake and another driveway leading to a big barn painted red with a queer high round thing at the end."

That was a silo to store green food for the cattle, but I could not tell him.

"Beside the big red barn," he said, "is a little brown barn and a number of out-buildings. I don't know what they are. It is a fine place anyway, and must, I think, belong to my father's friend who invited me here—now let us go up to this wide pasture where you were leading me."

I gladly went ahead of him and he was following me quite nicely when suddenly he stopped.

"Pony-Boy," he said, "I hate these forests with their sour-faced trees."

This was a new thought to me and I turned it over in my mind.

"They've got brains in their tossing heads," he said. "They used to be wicked giants and some great power turned them into these wooden things with waving arms that beg us to come in and be choked to death."

What kind of a boy was this, I wondered. He talked something like a girl and something like a lad who had always had his nose in a story-book. Well, he wasn't dull anyway. I love to have boys talk to me. Some of them treat me as if I were an animated rocking-horse with no brains at all. So I stepped along quite happily while he went on talking to himself.

"I wonder why my father let me come here. This bird of mystery has certainly flown to one queer place. The whole trip was owlish. After I left the cities there were forests like these, then lakes and rivers and more lakes and rivers. Then that awful drive in a democrat over rocks and rills and corduroy roads. My bones are most racked apart."

So that was why he didn't want to ride me, I thought. Poor lad! he was tired.

"Pony-Boy," he said, laying a timid finger on the tip of one of my ears, "I'm not afraid exactly, but I don't like spooky woods and queer silent waiting people. That old settler who drove me in wouldn't open his mouth and his name is Talker—what do you think of that?"

I was amused. This queer man had brought me in the evening before tied to the tail of his cart. He had taken me from a steamer that came to a big lake, and all the way in he had said nothing but "Get up" to his old grey mare, who had not deigned to pass the time of day with me. They were a pair—but I must listen to the boy who was speaking quite earnestly now.

"Why in the name of old King Log did my father send me to spend the summer in this eerie place? Is there no country air south of these wads of Canadian forest?"

I shook my head. How could I tell anything about his father? I had never seen him. He must be a peculiar man though, if his son did not dare to ask him the reason for things.

The lad was venturing now to lay his hand on my head. "Pony-Boy, I've never had a pet as big as you. I live in a city, and my friends are small creatures like dogs and cats and mice and rats."

As if he thought I was wondering whether he had no boy friends he went on slowly, "My father says that human beings may go back on you, but an animal never does."

I pawed the grass thoughtfully. This boy had been brought up in a queer way. I'm sorry for boys and girls when they're puzzled and unhappy—boys especially because I've been more with them. What this lad wanted to do now was to get his mind off himself. He was travelling about right inside of his little home cage.

I cautiously touched my muzzle to his shoulder, then glanced at the sheep.

He was pretty quick to respond and broke into a nice boyish laugh, but a rather subdued one as if he had been hushed up a good bit.

"Isn't he a caution," he said, pointing to the old ram, who, after one terrified look at us two strangers, was leading the ewes in and out among the magnificent old trees scattered about the hillside.

"He's going to hide them in the forest back there," said the boy. "He doesn't trust us. Poor animals—they run no risks."

I was delighted. This boy was a brother to us of the lower creation, but why had he been afraid of me? Possibly it was because he was not used to being with animals, though in his soul he loved them.

"I'm so tired," he said suddenly, and he flopped down on a big flat rock which was very pleasant and warm in the sunshine.

"Squattez vous, Pony," he said, and to be agreeable I lay down, for I have not the objection to doubling my legs under me that some members of the horse family have.

"I'm sure out of the world," he was murmuring as he gazed at the blue waters of the long lake spread out before us. "Of course I've seen mountains and hills in the distance before, but I never got right up among them. Pony-Boy, I'm the queerest kid you ever saw."

"You sure are," I thought, but of course I could say nothing.

His attention wandered from the lake to me. "I've often seen ponies like you in parks and on the streets, but I've never been so near one. Oh! I wish I had a pony of my own, but I suppose you cost a good deal of money."

I certainly did, but there was no reason why he should know just how much. I don't like to hear a lad counting up the cost of everything.

"I shouldn't think a settler away up here could afford you," he said. "You look like A, number one stock."

I twitched my ears backward and forward as I have a way of doing when I'm puzzled. Old Talker couldn't own this place. I had my suspicions that the whole thing was the fad of some rich man. My log cabin was the only rough thing on the place. The barns, hen-houses, ice-house, root-house, carriage-house and the flower garden in front and the vegetable garden at the back were as up-to-date as if they were right down in my original home in the State of New York.

These sheep running away from us were of standard stock, and the evening before I had seen a fine herd of Holstein cows and some of the best bred pigs I had ever come across.

Someone was trying an experiment up on these Highlands. Perhaps it was the tall man I had just seen coming out of the house and joining the children.

The boy did not see him. He was lying on the rock, his face propped on his hands.

"You're talking with your ears, Pony," he said. "I'll bet you want to know all about me—who I am, where I come from, and why in the mischief I came up here. Well, as I told you, I'm in a class by myself, for my father won't allow me to associate with anyone but himself and our two old servants, John and Margie. Ever since I was a little boy, someone has been trying to kidnap me. Now what do you think of that?"

CHAPTER II THE MAN AND THE BOY

I examined the boy carefully. Now I thought of it, though he was stylish, he was not handsomely dressed. His clothes were of good, but not fine material, his shoes were well-worn, his blue belted coat had odd buttons on it. He did not look to me like a rich man's child. He seemed more like the son of some professional man only moderately well off—what did he mean by the kidnapping story?

His green eyes were flashing. "I don't know the reason for it, Pony-Boy, for my father never talks much to me, but he never lets me go out alone, and I'm not allowed to speak to strangers. He's a criminal lawyer you know, and perhaps some bad man he has sent to prison thinks he owes him a grudge."

I was a bit uneasy about this boy. Before this I had had young