the evolutions of the awful beast permitted, I caught a glance of her
features. She appeared to be very much interested in the proceedings;
but the instant that the mud flew, she disappeared from the window, and
a moment later she appeared on the stoop with a long poker in her hand,
and fire enough in her eye to heat it red-hot.

Just then Stiver's horse stood up on his hind legs and tried to hug me
with the others. This scared me. A horse never shows his strength to
such advantage as when he is coming down on you like a frantic
pile-driver. I instantly dodged, and the cold sweat fairly boiled out
of me.

It suddenly came over me that I had once figured in a similar position
years ago. My grandfather owned a little white horse that would get up
from a meal at Delmonico's to kick the President of the United States.
He sent me to the lot one day, and unhappily suggested that I often went
after that horse and suffered all kinds of defeat in getting him out of
the pasture, but I had never tried to ride him. Heaven knows I never
thought of it. I had my usual trouble with him that day. He tried to
jump over me, and push me down in a mud-hole, and finally got up on his
hind legs and came waltzing after me with facilities enough to convert
me into hash, but I turned and just made for that fence with all the
agony a prospect of instant death could crowd into me. If our candidate
for the Presidency had run one-half as well, there would be seventy-five
postmasters in Danbury to-day, instead of one.

I got him out finally, and then he was quiet enough, and I took him up
alongside the fence and got on him. He stopped an instant, one brief
instant, and then tore off down the road at a frightful speed. I lay
down on him and clasped my hands tightly around his neck, and thought of