He ran toward his house, which was only a few rods beyond us, while I started on in pursuit of the two men at top speed.  Before my horse had taken a dozen jumps I heard a horn blowing behind me and its echo in the hills.  Within a half a moment a dozen horns were sounding in the valleys around me.  What a contrast to the quiet in which we had been riding was this pandemonium which had broken loose in the countryside.  A little ahead I could see men running out of the fields.  My horse had begun to lather, for the sun was hot.  My companions were far ahead.  I could not see the dust of their heels now.  I gave up trying to catch them and checked the speed of my horse and went on at a walk.  The horns were still sounding.  Some of them seemed to be miles away.  About twenty rods ahead I saw three riders in strange costumes come out of a dooryard and take the road at a wild gallop in pursuit of Latour and Purvis.  They had not discovered me.  I kept as calm as I could in the midst of this excitement.  I remember laughing when I thought of the mess in which “Mr. Purvis” would shortly find himself.

I passed the house from which the three riders had just turned into the road.  A number of women and an old man and three or four children stood on the porch.  They looked at me in silence as I was passing and then began to hiss and jeer.  It gave me a feeling I have never known since that day.  I jogged along over the brow of a hill when, at a white, frame house, I saw the center toward which all the men of the countryside were coming.

Suddenly I heard the hoof-beats of a horse behind me.  I stopped, and looking over my shoulder saw a rider approaching me in the costume of an Indian chief.  A red mask covered his face.  A crest of eagle feathers circled the edge of his cap.  Without a word he rode on at my side.  I knew not then that he was the man Josiah Curtis—­nor could I at any time have sworn that it was he.

A crowd had assembled around the house ahead.  I could see a string of horsemen coming toward it from the other side.  I wondered what was going to happen to me.  What a shouting and jeering in the crowded dooryard!  I could see the smoke of a fire.  We reached the gate.  Men in Indian masks and costumes gathered around us.

“Order!  Sh-sh-sh,” was the loud command of the man beside me in whom I recognized—­or thought that I did—­the voice of Josiah Curtis.

“What has happened?”

“One o’ them tried to serve a writ an’ we have tarred an’ feathered him.”

Just then I heard the voice of Purvis shouting back in the crowd this impassioned plea: 

“Bart, for God’s sake, come here.”

I turned to Curtis and said: 

“If the gentleman tried to serve the writ he acted without orders and deserves what he has got.  The other fellow is simply a hired man who came along to take care of the horses.  He couldn’t tell the difference between a writ and a hole in the ground.”