Lapham said nothing, but he let the mare out a little.

The sleighs and cutters were thickening round them.
On the Milldam it became difficult to restrict the mare
to the long, slow trot into which he let her break.
The beautiful landscape widened to right and left of them,
with the sunset redder and redder, over the low,
irregular hills before them. They crossed the Milldam
into Longwood; and here, from the crest of the first upland,
stretched two endless lines, in which thousands of cutters
went and came. Some of the drivers were already speeding
their horses, and these shot to and fro on inner lines,
between the slowly moving vehicles on either side
of the road. Here and there a burly mounted policeman,
bulging over the pommel of his M'Clellan saddle, jolted by,
silently gesturing and directing the course, and keeping
it all under the eye of the law. It was what Bartley
Hubbard called "a carnival of fashion and gaiety on the
Brighton road," in his account of it. But most of the
people in those elegant sleighs and cutters had so little
the air of the great world that one knowing it at all
must have wondered where they and their money came from;
and the gaiety of the men, at least, was expressed,
like that of Colonel Lapham, in a grim almost fierce,
alertness; the women wore an air of courageous apprehension.
At a certain point the Colonel said, "I'm going to let
her out, Pert," and he lifted and then dropped the reins
lightly on the mare's back.

She understood the signal, and, as an admirer said,