Woodbine, as has been said, lay about two miles from Four Corners, the road leading to the post office clearly visible for almost its entire length.

It had always been the custom at Woodbine and Uplands to send to Four Corners twice daily for the mail, the children as a rule doing the errand and only too glad of the diversion, for they never failed to hear some bit of neighborhood gossip at the post office, or meet friends from some of the adjacent estates. Moreover, there was invariably the speculation regarding the writers of the letters taken from the box even when the letters were addressed to other members of their respective families, for neither Beverly, Athol or Archie had extensive correspondence with the world beyond the mountains. Just now, however, a new and vital interest had arisen, for after a grave family conclave it had been definitely settled that the time had arrived when Beverly and Athol must break away from the old order of things and be sent to boarding schools. Up to the present time a governess or a tutor had taught their young ideas to shoot, (straight or otherwise) with Admiral Seldon as head of the discipline department, a position by no means a sinecure since Beverly represented one-half the need of such a department. Until the children were twelve the governess had been all sufficient but at that point Athol rebelled at being “a sissy” and demanded a tutor, Beverly entirely concurring in his views. So a tutor had been installed and had remained until the previous July, when he was called to fill a more lucrative position elsewhere. Thus Woodbine’s young shoots were left without a trainer, to the dismay of its older members and distress of its younger ones, for both Beverly and Athol had grown very fond of Norman Lee, who seemed but little older than themselves, though in reality quite ten years their senior. In the schoolroom he had been the staid, dignified instructor but beyond its walls no better chum and comrade could have been found. He was hale-fellow in all their good times and frolics. Consequently his resignation “just broke up the whole outfit,” as Athol put it, and both children vowed they wouldn’t have anybody else at Woodbine because nobody else could ever be half so nice as Norman Lee. Long before the three years of his tutorship ended he had become “Norman” to all the household, even the children adopting the more familiar appellation beyond the schoolroom doors, though within it the concession of “Mr. Norman” was yielded, which secretly amused the young tutor not a little, and often caused him to wonder how the boy and girl contrived to maintain the attitude so consistently and with such perfect gravity. For four hours of the day he might have been Methuselah’s own brother from their standpoint but upon the school-room’s threshold they dropped as garments the relations of pupils and teacher and became the best of good chums.

It had been a singularly happy relation and it was not surprising that it seemed to them well-nigh impossible to renew it with an entire stranger.

And truth to tell the Admiral and Mrs. Ashby were not in the least sanguine of being able to find any one else capable of repeating it and for a time were a good deal daunted by the outlook for the coming year.

The previous year Archie Carey had gone away to school and during his holidays had come back to Uplands brimful of enthusiasm and determined to have Athol join him. Athol was quite as eager to do so, the one fly in his ointment of pure joy being the thought of the separation from Beverly, though boy-like, he kept this fact deep buried in his heart. Nevertheless, it made him feel queer when the possibility of going upon divided ways to different schools became a very definite one indeed. The boy and girl were like a pair of horses which has been driven together fifteen years and suddenly separated. True, the separation was not as yet a fact, but human beings can suffer more in anticipation than the brute creation can in reality. The great question at present was which of many schools to select. Admiral Seldon had written to several for circulars and information, and had been nearly swamped with replies in every conceivable form. At length he had weeded the mass down to three, entering into more definite correspondence with these, and the replies to his last letters were now being eagerly awaited by Beverly, Athol and Archie. The school now under most favorable consideration for Beverly was about thirty-five miles from Sprucy Branch, the town nearest Four Corners and Woodbine.

It was the coming of these letters which had caused the excitement at Woodbine as the boys and girl were about to go for the morning mail, Athol upon his little thoroughbred, Royal, Archie mounted upon his own handsome hunter, Snowdrift, and Beverly on a wiry little broncho which had been sent to her by an old friend of the Admiral’s who had become the owner of a ranche in Arizona. The friend had assured Admiral Seldon that “Apache” had been “thoroughly gentled,” and Beverly, who had never known the meaning of fear from the hour she could bestride a horse, had welcomed him with delight. Whether the old Admiral had done likewise is open to doubt, but Mrs. Ashby frankly protested. As a girl she had ridden every ridable thing upon the place but it was literally a horse of another color when it came to the point of Beverly doing as she had done. So Apache had been tolerated, not welcomed, by Mrs. Ashby, and having been an eye-witness to some of the little beast’s astonishing performances when he first came two years before, she has exacted from Beverly a promise to be very cautious when riding him. Until his arrival Beverly had ridden Jewel, her fourteen-hand pony, and been quite content, but Jewel’s luster was dimmed by Apache’s brilliant “shines,” as old Uncle Abel called his cavortings when feeling exceptionally fit from his unaccustomed diet of oats and feed. Out in Arizona his food had consisted of alfalfa grass with an occasional “feed” thrown in, so it is not surprising that the new order of high living somewhat intoxicated him. But Apache had won his place at Woodbine.

As the young people were about to set forth upon their two-mile trip for the mail Mrs. Ashby warned:

“Now Beverly be careful, dear. Apache has a lively tickle in his toes this crisp morning, and besides the roads are terribly muddy and slippery from last night’s shower.”

“I’ll be careful mumsey dear,” answered the girl, as she ran down the steps to spring upon her mount.

“Careful and no racing with the boys, remember,” Mrs. Ashby called after her.

Perhaps Beverly did not hear the concluding admonition. At any rate we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, for at that moment Apache gave testimony of the tickle in his toes by springing straight up into the air in as good an imitation of a “buck” as any “thoroughly gentled” little broncho could give in the polite society of his aristocratic Virginia cousins. Mrs. Ashby gave a startled exclamation, but Beverly, secure in her seat, waved a merry good-by and was off after the boys who were calling to her to “hurry up.”

Of course they had not heard one word of the foregoing conversation. Had they done so it is safe to say that they would never had proposed the two-mile race to the post office nor tormented Beverly for being “no sort of a sport,” and “scared to back her painted plug against their thoroughbreds.” They were honorable lads and would have felt honor-bound to respect Mrs. Ashby’s wishes. But not having heard, they gave Beverly “all that was coming to her for riding a calico nag,” though said “nag” was certainly a little beauty.

Nearly a quarter of the distance to Four Corners had been ridden when Beverly’s temper, never too elastic, snapped. Her riding crop descended with a thwack, first upon Royal’s round flank, then upon Snowdrift’s and finally upon Apache’s side as she cried:

“You-all hush up and ride. I’ll beat you to Four Corners or die in the attempt!”

The sudden onslaught brought the result to be expected. The two thoroughbreds plunged forward with snorts of indignant protest, answered by Apache’s very plebian squeal of rage as he shook his bony little head and struck into a gait such as Beverly had never dreamed a horse could strike. It was like a tornado let loose, and, expert little horsewoman that she was, she found ample occupation for all her wits and equestrian skill, though she managed to jerk out as she whirled past her companions:

“Two pounds of Huyler’s candy if I do beat those giraffes of yours.”

Hence the commotion at Four Corners a few moments later, the whirlwind arrived and the conversation recorded in the first chapter.

“Mr. Telford, have you got any Huyler boxes?” asked the winner of the race, resting her gauntleted hands and her riding crop upon the counter. “These boys are trying to make me take two pounds of cinnamon suckers on a bet. Did you ever hear such nonsense? I couldn’t eat them in a year and real, sure-enough bets mean something better than suckers.”

“Wall, Miss Bev’ly, I aint rightly knowin’ what kind o’ lollypops is in them boxes, most times folks jist helps theirselves an’ I don’t pay no ’tention ter the brand. It’s all candy, I reckon,” answered the shop keeper, drawing two or three boxes from his case and placing them upon his counter. From the appearance of the wrappings they belied Huyler’s advertisement of being “fresh every hour,” though one of the boxes bore that firm’s name. The others were stamped by Martha Washington, Lowney and one or two other widely known manufacturers.

“Yes this one’s Huyler’s but I’ve got to have two this time. Yes I have too! Athol’s got to put up for one and you for the other. Why just look at me! The mud on me ought to just naturally make you both want to do something to pay up for making me get into such a state.”

“We didn’t make you! You started the circus,” protested her brother.

“Blessed if I’d do a thing for you if it wasn’t likely to be the last race we’ll have in one while. Look at those,” interjected Archie Carey, coming over from the letter window where he had gone to ask for the mail and slamming upon the counter beside the boxes of candy half a dozen plump letters. Three bore the addresses of the schools under consideration. All three faces grew sober.

“I’ll bet those will settle your hash Bev,” was Athol’s comment.

“Ah, why couldn’t you have been a boy instead of a girl anyhow,” protested Archie. “Then you’d have come along with us as a matter of course and our good times wouldn’t have all been knocked into a cocked hat.”

“Come on. Let’s go home,” said Beverly soberly, as she gathered up her boxes, nodded to Mr. Telford, and took her mud-splashed self from the store, the boys lingering to pay the bill.

She had remounted Apache when they joined her, Archie carrying the letters which he stuffed viciously into the mail-bag strapped to his saddle. Then the two boys sprang upon their waiting horses. As they rode in silence Beverly glanced down at her khaki riding skirt and at Apache’s mud-splashed body, and the next moment had stopped short, exclaiming:

“Look at us, and I promised mother I wouldn’t race!”

“You did!” exclaimed the boys in duet.

“I sure did,” she repeated with a solemn nod.

This was too much for her companions and the woodland bordering the road echoed to their shouts. When they had regained some self-control Athol asked:

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do? I’m going to stop at the branch and scrub some of this mud off Apache and myself, for if we show up like this mother will think I’ve been acting ten times worse that I really have, though goodness knows it’s bad enough as it is. I didn’t mean to break my promise, but I couldn’t let you boys put it all over me like you did and not get back at you. Now get out of the way while I clean up, and maybe you could do a little on your own accounts and not suffer for it either. ‘Snowdrift!’ He looks exactly like one after a spring thaw.”

The boys glanced at the beautiful white horse and then at each other. The ensuing fifteen minutes were spent in the vigorous grooming of their steeds, Beverly scrubbing Apache as energetically as Archie and Athol did Royal and Snowdrift. Flat sticks served as scrapers and bunches of dry grass for cloths. When the animals looked a little less like animated mud pies Beverly turned her attention to her riding skirt. To restore that to its pristine freshness might have daunted a professional scourer. The more she rubbed and scrubbed the worse the result and finally, when she was a sight from alternate streaks of mud and wet splotches, she sprang upon the startled Apache crying:

“Come along home quick! If I’ve got to face the music the quicker it’s done the better,” and was off down the road in a fair way to being as muddy when she reached Woodbine as she was when she began her cleansing processes at the branch, while up in one of the dormer windows of the big house her mother stood smiling to herself. It was one of the rare occasions when she had occasion to go to that room for some stored away winter clothing against Beverly’s pending departure for boarding school. As the riders resumed their homeward journey she smiled and said softly:

“How exactly like Beverly. Now will come confession and repentance and shall I be able to keep a sober face?”