PARSON.--"You are very good, sir. But" (spoken with pride) "I am on
horseback."

TRAVELLER.--"On horseback! Well, I should not have guessed that! You
don't look like it. Where did you say you were going?"

"I did not say where I was going, sir," said the parson, dryly, for he
was much offended at that vague and ungrammatical remark applicable to
his horsemanship, that "he did not look like it."

"Close!" said the traveller, laughing; "an old traveller, I reckon."

The parson made no reply, but he took up his shovel-hat, and, with a bow
more majestic than the previous one, walked out to see if his pad had
finished her corn.

The animal had indeed finished all the corn afforded to her, which was
not much, and in a few minutes more Mr. Dale resumed his journey. He had
performed about three miles, when the sound of wheels behind him made him
turn his head; and he perceived a chaise driven very fast, while out of
the windows thereof dangled strangely a pair of human legs. The pad
began to curvet as the post-horses rattled behind, and the parson had
only an indistinct vision of a human face supplanting those human legs.
The traveller peered out at him as he whirled by,--saw Mr. Dale tossed up
and down on the saddle, and cried out, "How's the leather?"

"Leather!" soliloquized the parson, as the pad recomposed herself, "what
does he mean by that? Leather! a very vulgar man. But I got rid of him
cleverly."