, a-clasping my
hands, and pleading wildly to every one around. "They'll be killed--they
don't see that awful fence."

While I was screaming, the whole five horses came, one after another,
sailed right over the fence, dived down like hen-hawks after a chicken,
and away toward another fence that choked up the road. Before I could
shriek out, and warn them, over they came, like a whirlwind, without
touching the fence or seeming to care--over, and away up the road,
taking one's breath with them.

"Mercy on me! what a providential escape!" says I to the gentleman;
"what wicked wretch could have heaped up things in the road? I do hope
they'll be found out and sent to State's prison. Why, it's just as bad
as blocking up a train of cars. Such nice-looking riders, too!"

The gentleman looked a trifle puzzled, then he smiled a little funnily,
and says he:

"Perhaps you do not understand that this is a 'hurdle-race.'"

"No," says I; "they told me that it would be horse-racing--nothing worse
than that."

"Well," says he, "it is nothing worse than that, only a little more
dangerous, and to you ladies more interesting, because the riders are
all gentlemen."

"What, those men in the caps, gentlemen--not circus-riders, nor
nothing?"

He laughed, and says he:

"I dare say no one of them has ever been in a circus since he left off
tunics, but they have learned to hunt, and love these hard leaps."

"You don't mean to say that they skiver over such fences on purpose?"
says I.

"Indeed they do, and build them higher and broader every year."

"You don't say so," says I, feeling my eyes open wide.

"They love the peril, for that increases the excitement."

"What if some of them were to be flung head over heels?"

"Oh, that has happened."

"Not to-day?"

"Yes, but fortunately the man was not killed."

I felt myself a-growing pale.

"But they don't know of it. Everybody is laughing," says I.

"Yes, it is generally known, but that is a part of the excitement. In a
crowd like this, it is difficult to realize trouble or death."

"How strange!" says I, putting the handkerchief that I had torn with
hard shaking into my pocket, with a deeply penitent feeling.

"It is strange," says he; "but this is no place for deep feeling, or you
would not see so many smiling faces around you, for a gentleman who owns
some of the race-horses, and came up only a day or two ago to see them
tried, is lying dead in his home now."

My hea