me, are you a skilled wrestler?"

I was nettled now at all these things which were coming to puzzle and
perturb an honest fellow out for a morning ride.

"Yes," I answered him, "since you are anxious to know, I'll say I can
throw any man in Fairfax except one."

"And he?"

"My father. He's sixty, as I told you, but he can always beat me."

"There are two in Fairfax you cannot throw," said Orme, smiling.

My blood was up just enough to resent this challenge. There came to me
what old Dr. Hallowell at Alexandria calls the "_gaudium certaminis_."
In a moment I was little more than a full-blooded fighting animal, and
had forgotten all the influences of my Quaker home.

"Sir," I said to him hotly, "I propose taking you home with me. But
before I do that, and since you seem to wish it, I am going to lay you
on your back here in the road. Frankly, there are some things about you
I do not like, and if that will remedy your conceit, I'm going to do it
for you--for any sort of wager you like."

"Money against your horse?" he inquired, stripping to his ruffled shirt
as he spoke. "A hundred guineas, five hundred?"

"Yes, for the horse," I said. "He's worth ten thousand. But if you've
two or three hundred to pay for my soiling the shoulders of your shirt,