llow-passengers,
and again I saw that instant's vision of wild and startled faces as the
crowded car rose and pitched downward, I knew not whither. With a sense
of inexpressible weariness, my brain at once allowed the terrible scene
to slip from its grasp, and I heard a doctor, who was standing at the
bedside watch in hand, say, quietly, "He'll sleep now for a couple of
hours."

The Romance of an Ox-Team.

The oxen, lean and rough-haired, one of them carroty red, the other
brindle and white, were slouching inertly along the narrow backwoods
road. From habit they sagged heavily on the yoke, and groaned huge windy
sighs, although the vehicle they were hauling held no load. This
structure, the mere skeleton of a cart, consisted of two pairs of
clumsy, broad-tired wheels, united by a long tongue of ash, whose tip
was tied with rope to the middle of the forward axle. The road looked
innocent of even the least of the country-road-master's well-meaning
attempts at repair,--a circumstance, indeed, which should perhaps be set
to its credit. It was made up of four deep, parallel ruts, the two
outermost eroded by years of journeying cart-wheels, the inner ones worn
by the companioning hoofs of many a yoke of oxen. Down the centre ran a
high and grassy ridge, intolerable to the country parson and the country
doctor, compelled to traverse this highway in their one-horse wagons.
From ruts and ridges alike protruded the imperishable granite boulder,
which wheels and feet might polish but never efface. On either side of
the roadway was traced an erratic furrow, professing to do duty for a
drain, and at intervals emptying a playful current across the track to
wander down the ruts.

Along beside the slouching team slouched a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered
youth, the white down just beginning to stiffen into bristles on his
long upper lip. His pale eyes and pale hair looked yet paler by contrast
with his thin, red, wind-roughened face. In his hand he carried a
long-handled ox-whip, with a short goad in the butt of it.

"Gee, Buck!" he drawled, prodding the near ox lightly in the ribs. And
the team lurched to the right to avoid a markedly obtrusive boulder.
"Haw, Bright!" he ejaculated a minute later, flicking with his whip the
off shoulder of the farther ox. And with sprawling legs and swaying of
hind-quarters the team swerved obediently to the left, shunning a
mire-hole that would have taken in the wheel to the hub. Presently,