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Show mm HALLE ERMINE PIVL5 ' mM ILLUSTRATIONS LAUREN STOUT I JST aBi i rr 1-i SYNOPSIS. John Valhint. a rtrh soH'-ty ffivorlto, fltiildrnly (Jim-ovt-rs th;i.r the Valiant corporation, cor-poration, wtitrh liin futh'T founded und wlil'-li was tin- prlni ipal Hourc of his woaltli. has Oiled. II.; voluntari ly turns ov,,r his ijrlvjM.; (o tunt: to the. r;v-iv-r for the rorilomUort, Ills entire rftnalnlnif ItoM.sf.sslons consist of an old motor car, ti while hull ilutr and iJainory court, a n :K-Icctc.J :K-Icctc.J estate in Virginia, (in the way to iJamory ,urt he ine.-ts Shirley Iand-ridk'e. Iand-ridk'e. an auhuiii-iiau id heuuly, and decides de-cides that he is Kohis- to like Virginia iin-linuiHely. iin-linuiHely. Htdrle 's mother. Mi's. Uand-rlth-:-'. and Major Hilstow i:clian?e rem-Inlseences rem-Inlseences during which It Is revealed (hat the major. Valiant's fulh'-r, and a man named isas:;ooh were rivals for the hand of Mis. Ihindrldire in her youth. Sa.ssoon and Valiant fought a duel on her account In which the former was killed. Valiant finds Immory court overgrown with weeds and creepers and decides to rehahllllate the .'!ace Valiant saves Shirley from the hite of a snake, which hiles 1 1 J 1 1 1 . Knowing tlit. tleadliness of the hite, Shirley sucks the poison from the wound und Hav.-s Ills life. Valiant learns for the'llrst time that Ids father left Virginia Vir-ginia on account it a duel In which Doctor Doc-tor Soutliall and Major Bristow acted as tils father's seconds. Valiant and Shirley Iiecoim; Kood friends. Mrs. Dandrldtte faints when she meets Valiant for the first time. Valiant discovers that he has a fortune in old walnut trees. The yearly tournament, a survival of the joustins of feudal (lines. Is held at Damory court. At the lust moment Valiant takes the place of one of the knights, who is sick, and enters tho lists. CHAPTER XXII!. Continued. The twelve horsemen were now Bit-tins Bit-tins their restive mounts in a group at one end of the lists. Two mounted monitors had stationed themselves on either side of the rope-barrier; a third stood behind the upright from whose arm was suspended the silver ring. The herald blew a blast, calling the title of. the. first of the knights. Instantly, In-stantly, with, lance at rest, the latter galloped. at full speed down the lists. There was a sharp musical clash, and as he dashed on, the ring flew the full length' of its tether and swung back, whirling' swiftly. It had been a close thrust, for the iron pike-point had smitten its rim. A cheer went up, under cover of which the rider looped back outside the lists to his former position. In an upper tier of the stand a spectator spec-tator made a cup of his hands. "The Knight of the Golden Spur against the field," he called. ; "What odds?" "Five to one, Spotteswood," a voltje answered. . "Ten dollars," announced the first. "Good." . And both made memorandum memoran-dum on their cuffs: A second time the trumpet sounded, and the Knight of Castlewood flashed ingloriously down the roped aisle a miss. Again and again the clear note rang out and a mounted figure plunged by, and presently, in a burst of cheering, the herald proclaimed "The Knight of the Black Eagle one!" and Chilly Lusk, In ,old-rose doublet and inky plume cantered back with a silver ring upon his pike. No simple thing, approaching leisurely leis-urely and afoot, to send that tapering point straight to the tiny mark. But at headlong gallop, astride a blooded horse straining to take the bit, a deed requiring a nice eye, a perfect seat and an unwavering arm and hand! Those knights who looped back with their pikes thus braceleted had spent long hours in practice and each rode as naturally as he breathed;, yet more than once a horse shied in mid-course and at the too-eager.:thrust of the spur bolted through the ropes. Valiant made his first essay and missed with the blood singing in his ears. The ring flew from his pike, catching him a swinging blbw on the temple in Wiere Had John Valiant Learned That Trick of the Loose Wrist and Inflexiblev'.TXru'st". 'I ;'"'.' j sv , . - ' " 'V T, ..'. ' its rebound, but he scarcely felt it. As he cantered back he heard the major's bass pitting him against the field. And then, suddenly, stand and field all vanished. He saw only the l'ong level rope-lined lane with its twinkling mid-air point.- -An exhilaration caught him at the feel of the splendid horseflesh horse-flesh beneath him that sense of oneness one-ness with the. creature he bestrode which the instinctive horseman knows. He lifted his lance and hefted it, seeking seek-ing its absolute balance, feeling its point as a fencer with his rapier. When again .the blood-red sash streamed away the . herald's, cry, "Knight of the Crimson Rose One!" set the field hand-clapping. From the next joust also. Valiant returned with the gage upon his lance. Two had gone to the Champion of Castlewood and two to scattering riders. When Valiant won his fourth the grand stand thundered with applause. The trumpet again pealed its silvery proclamation. Judge Chalmers was on his feet. "Fifty to ten on the Crimson Rose," he cried. This time, however, there were no takers. He called again, but none heard him; the last tilts were too absorbing. Where had John Valiant learned that trick of the loose wrist and Inflexible In-flexible thrust, but at the fencing club? Where that subconscious management of the rein, that nice gage of speed and distance, but on the polo field? The old sports stood him now in good stead. "Why. he has a seat like a centaur!" exclaimed the judge praise indeed in a community where riding was a passion and horseflesh 'a fetish! "Oh, dear!" mourned Nancy Chalmers. Chal-mers. "I've bet six pairs of gloves on Quint Carter. Never mind; if it has to be anybody else, I'd rather it were Mr. Valiant. It's about time Damory Court got something after Rip-Van-Winkling it for thirty years. Besides, he's giving us the dance, and I love him for that! Quint still has a chance, though. If he takes the next two, and Mr. Valiant misses " Katharine looked at her with a little lit-tle smile. "He won't miss," she said. She had seen that look on his face before and read it aright. John Valiant Va-liant had striven in many contests, not only of skill but of strength and daring, dar-ing, before crowded grand stands. But never in all his life had he so desired to pluck the prize. His grip was tense on the lance as the yellow doublet and olive plume of Castlewood shot away for a last time and failed. An instant later the Knight of the Crimson Crim-son Rose flashed down the lists with the last ring on his pike. And the tourney was won. In the shouting and hand-clapping Valiant took the rose from his hatband hat-band and bound it with a shred of his sash to his lance-point. As he rode slowly toward the massed stand, the whole field was so'still that he could hear the hoofs of the file of knights behind him. The people were on their feet. The mounted herald blew his blast. "By the Majesties of St. Michael and St. George," he proclaimed, "I declare the Knight of the Crimson Rose the victor of this our tourney, and do charge him now to choose his Queen of Beauty, that all may do her homage!" hom-age!" Shirley saw the horse coming down the line, its rider bareheaded now, and her heart, began to race wildly. Beyond wanting him to take part, she had not thought. She looked about her, suddenly dismayed. People were smiling at her and clapping their hands. From the other end of the stand she saw Nancy Chalmers throwing throw-ing her a kiss, and beside her a tall pale girl in champagne-color staring through a jeweled lorgnette. She was conscious all at once that the flanneled rider was very close that hiSj pike-point, with its big red blossom, was stretching up to her. With the rose In her hand she curtsied curt-sied to him, while the blurred throng cheered itself hoarse, and the band struck up "You Great Big Beautiful Doll," with extraordinary rapture, to the tune of which the noise finally subsided sub-sided to a battery of hilarious congratulations con-gratulations which left her .flushed and a little breathless. Nancy Chalmers and Betty Page had burst upon her like petticoated whirlwinds and presently, pres-ently, when the crowd had lessened, the judge came to introduce his visitor. visi-tor. "Mr. Fargo and his daughter are our guests at Gladden Hall," he told her. "They are old friends of Valiant's, by the way; they knew him in New York." "Katharine's lighting her incense now, I guess," observed Silas Fargo. "See there!" He pointed across the stand, where sood a willowy tan figure, fig-ure, one hand beckoning to the concourse con-course below, where Valiant stood, the center of a shifting group, round which the white bulldog, mad with recovered liberty, tore in eccentric circles. As they looked, she called softly, "John! John!" Shirley saw him tart and face about, then come quickly toward her, amazement and welcome in his eyes. As Shirley turned away a little later with the major, that whispering voice seemed to sound in her ears "John! John!" . There smote her suddenly the thought that when he had chosen her his Queen of Beauty, he had not seen the other had not known she was there. A few moments before the day had been golden; she went home through a landscape that somehow seemed to have lost its brightest glow. CHAPTER XXIV. Katharine Decides. Katharine left the field of Runny-mede Runny-mede with John Valiant in the dun-colored dun-colored motor. She sat in the driver's seat beside him, while the bulldog capered, ca-pered, ecstatically barking, from side to side of the rear cushions. Her father had declined the honor, remarking remark-ing that he considered a professional cha.iffeur a sufficient risk of his valuable valua-ble life and that the Chalmers' grays were good' enough for him a decision which did not wholly iisplease Katharine. The car was not the smart Pan-hard Pan-hard in which she had so often spun down the avenue or along the shell-roads shell-roads of the north shore. It lacked those fin-de-siecle appurtenances which marked the ne plus ultra of its kind, as her observant eye recognized; but it ran staunch and true. The powerful hands that gripped the steering-wheel were brown with sun and wind, and the handsome face above it had a look of keenness and energy she had never surprised before. They passed many vehicles and there were few whose occupants oc-cupants did not greet him. In fact, as he presently remarked, it was a saving of energy to keep his hat off; and he tossed the Panama into the rear seat. On the rim of the village a group raised a cheer to which he nodded laughingly, and further on a little old lady on a timid vine-colored porch beside a church, waved a black- The Tournament Ball at Damory Court That Night Was More Than an Event. i mitted band to him with a sweet old-time old-time gesture. Katharine noted that he bowed to her with extra care. "That's Miss Mattie Sue Mabry," he said, "the quaintest, dearest thing you ever saw. She taught my father his letters " Where the Red Road stretched level before them, he threw the throttle open for a long rush through the thymy-scented air. The light, late afternoon breeze drew by them, sweeping sweep-ing back Katharine's graceful sinuous veil and spraying them with odors of clover and sunny fruit. They passed orchard clumps bending with young apples, boundless aisles of green, young-tasseled corn and- shadowy groves that smelled of fern Srnd sassafras, sassa-fras, opening out into more sunlighted vistas overarched by the intense penetrable pene-trable of the June sky. John Valiant had never seemed to her so wholly good to see, with his waving hair ruffling in their flight and the westering sun shining redly on his face. Midway of this spurt he looked at her to say: "Did you ever know a more beautiful countryside? See how the pink-and-yellow of those grain fields fades into the purple of the hills. Very few painters have ever captured a tint like that. It's like raspberries crushed in curdled milk." "I've quite lost my heart to It all," she said, her voice jolting with the speed of their course. "It's a perfect pastoral so different from our terrific city pace. Of course it must be a trifle dull at times seeing the same people always al-ways and without the theater thea-ter and the opera and the whirl about one but the kind of life one reads about in the novels nov-els of the South, you know ' I suppose one doesn't realize that it actually exists until one comes to a Southern place like this. And the negro servants! How odd it must, tie to have a white-haired old darky in a brass-buttoned swallow-tail for a butler!. but-ler!. So picturesque! At Judge Chalmers' Chal-mers' I have a feeling all the time that I'm walking through a stage rehearsal." re-hearsal." The car slackened speed as It slid by a white-washed cabin at whose entrance en-trance sat a dusky gray-bearded figure. fig-ure. Valiant pointed. "Do you see him?" he asked. "I see a very ordinary old colored man sitting on the door-step," Katharine Katha-rine replied. "That's Mad Anthony, our local Mother Shipton. He's a prophet and soothsayer. Uncle Jefferson that's my body-servant insists that he foretold fore-told my coming to Damory Court. If we had more time you could have your fortune told." "How thrilling!" she commented with half-humorous irony. He pointed to a great white house set in a grove of trees. . "That is Beechwood," he told her, "the Beverly homestead. Young Beverley was the Knight of the Silver Cross. A fine old place, isn't it? It was burned by the Indians during the French and Indian War. My great-great-great-grandfather " He broke off. "But then, those old things won't interest you." "They interest you a great deal, don't they?" she asked. "Yes," he admitted, "they do. You see, my ancestors are such new acquaintances, ac-quaintances, I find them absorbing. You know when I lived in New York" "Last month." He laughed little not quite the laugh she had- known in the past. "Yes, but I can hardly believe it; 1 seem to have been here half a lifetime. To think that a month ago I was a double-dyed New Yorker." "It's been a strange experience for you. When you come back to New York " He looked at her, oddly she thought. "Why should I go back?" "Why.' Because it's your natural habitat. Ins't it?" "That's the word," he said smiling. "It was my habitat. This is my home." She was silent a moment in sheer surprise. She had thought of this Southern essay as a quickly passing incident, a colorful chapter whose page might any day be turned. But it was impossible to mistake his meaning. mean-ing. Clearly, he was deeply infatuated with this Arcadian experience and had no thought at present but to continue it indefinitely.' They were passing the entrance y. i. cherry-bordered lane, and without taking tak-ing his hands from the gear, he nodded -toward the low broad-eaved dwelling with its flowering arbors that showed in flashing glimpses of brown and red between the intervening trees. "The palace of the queen!" he said "Rosewood, by name." She looked in some curiosity. Clearly, Clear-ly, if not a refuge of genteel poverty, neither' was it the al'ode of wealth; so, from her assured rampart of the Fargo millions, Katharine reflected complacently. The girl was a local favorite, af course he had been tactful tact-ful as to that. It was fortunate, in a way, that he had not seen her, Katharine, Katha-rine, in the grand stand until afterward. after-ward. Feeling toward her as she' believed be-lieved he did, with his absurd directness, direct-ness, he would have been likely to drop the rose in her lap, never reflecting re-flecting that, the tourney being a local function, the choice should not fall ur on an outlander. The slowing of the car brought her back to the present, and she looked up to see before them the great gate of Gladden Hall. She did not speak till they had quite stopped. Then, as her hand lay in his for farewell, "You are right in your decision," de-cision," she said softly. "This is your place. You are a Valiant of Virginia. I didn't realize it before, but I am beginning be-ginning to see all it means to you." Her voice held a lingering indefinable indefin-able quality that was almost sadness, and for that one slender instant, she opened on him the unmasked batteries of her glorious gray eyes. The tournament ball at Damory Court that night was more than an event. The old mansion was an irresistible irre-sistible magnet. The floor of its el-Iovy el-Iovy parlor was known to be of delt-eta-ble hugeness. Its gardens were a legend. le-gend. The whole place, moreover, was steeped in the very odor of old mystery mys-tery and new romance. Small wonder that to this particular affair the elect the major was the high custodian of the rolls, his decisions being as the laws of the'Medes ind Persians came gaily from the i rthest county line, and the big houses of the neighborhood neighbor-hood were crammed with over-night guests. P.y half past nine o'clock the pha-1e pha-1e ix of chaperons decreed by old custom cus-tom had begun to arrive, and the great iron gate at the front of the drive erect and rustlessnow saw an imposing impos-ing processional of carriages. These passed up a slope as radiant with the fairy light of paper lanterns as a Japanese Japa-nese thoroughfare In festival season. The colored bulbs swung moon-like from tree and shrub, painting their rainbow lusters on grass and driveway. drive-way. Under the high gray columns of the porch and into the wide door framed in its small leaded panes that glowed with the merry light within, poured a stream of loveliness: in carriage-wraps of light tints, collared and edged with fur or eider, or ide sleeved mandarin coats falling back from dazzling throats and arms, hair swathed with chiffon against the night dews, and gallantly cavaliered by masculine mas-culine black and white. These from their tiring-rooms overflowed over-flowed presently. garbed like dreams, to make obeisance to the dowagers and then to drift through flower-lined corridors, the foam on recurrent wave of discovery. Behind the rose-bower in the hall, which shielded a dozen colored musicians violins, cello, guitars gui-tars and mandolins came premonitory chirps and shivers, which presently vrove into the low and dreamy melody of "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia." Promptly as the clock in the hall chimed ten, the music merged into a march. Doors on opposite sides of the upper hall swung wide and down the broad staircase came, with slow step, a stately procession: two heralds in fawn-colored doublets with scroll and trumpets wound with flowers, behind them the Queen of Beauty, her fingertips finger-tips resting lightly in the hand of the Knight of the Crimson Rose, and these followed by as brave a concourse of lords and ladies as ever graced castle-hall castle-hall in the gallant days "when knighthood knight-hood was in flower." Shirley's gown was of pure white: her arms were swathed in tulle, crossed with straps of seed-pearl, over which hung long semi-flowing sleeves of satin, and from her shoulders rose a stiff pointed medieval collar of Venetian Vene-tian lace, against whose pale traceries her bronze hair glowed with rosy lights. The elge of the square-cut corsage cor-sage was powdered with the pearls and against their sheen her breast and neck had the soft creamy ivory of magnolia buds. Her straight plain train of safih, knotted with fresh white rose-buds (Nancy Chalmers had labored la-bored for a frantic half-hour in the dressing-room for this effect) was held by the seven-year-old Byloe twins, beribboned knickerbockers, duly impressed with the grandeur of thelt privilege and grimly Intent on acquitting acquit-ting themselves with glory. Shirley's face was still touched with the surprise that had swept it as Valiant had stepped to her side. She had looked to see him in the conventional conven-tional panoply a sober-sided mascK'ine mode decrees. What she had behvld was a figure that might have steppe-d out of an Elizabethan picture-fmsie He was in deep , purple slashed with gold. A cloak of thin crimson velvek narrowly edged with ermine huni? from his shoulders, lined with tissue like cloth-of-gold. , From the rolling brim of his hat swept a curling purple plume. He wore a slender dress-sword, and an order set with brilliants spar kled on his breast. The costume had been one he han worn at a fancy ball of the winter b-fore. b-fore. It had been made from a paint ing at Windsor of one of the dukes ol Buckingham, and it made a perfect fol for Shirley's white. The eleven knights of the tourney, each with his chosen lady, if less splendid, were tricked out in sufficiently sufficient-ly gorgeous attire. Many an ancient brocade had been awakened for the nonce from its lavender bed, and ruffs and gold-braid were at no premium. (TO BE CONTINTTTOn 1 |