Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid steps, and my own
excited risibilities would allow:

'I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that you can't beat the
pig!'

'No--sir!' the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions;
'you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that _you_ can't
do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand
not a month ago.'

'Well, I'll do it; Sandy to have the stakes.'

'Agreed,' said the Colonel, and away we went.

The swinish racer was about a hundred yards ahead when I gave the mare
the reins, and told her to go. And she did go. She flew against the wind
with a motion so rapid that my face, as it clove the air, felt as if
cutting its way through a solid body, and the trees, as we passed,
seemed taken with a panic, and running for dear life in the opposite
direction.

For a few moments I thought the mare was gaining, and I turned to the
Colonel with an exultant look.

'Don't shout till you win, my boy,' he called out from the distance
where I was fast leaving him and Sandy.

_I did not shout_, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and
the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the