itered--lovers hand in hand--eating fruit and candy and drinking
soda-water, or sat on the curb-stone, mothers with babies at their
breasts and toddling children clinging close--all waiting for the
celebration to begin.

It was a great day for the Hon. Samuel Budd. With a cheery smile and
beaming goggles, he moved among his constituents, joking with yokels,
saying nice things to mothers, paying gallantries to girls, and chucking
babies under the chin. He felt popular and he was--so popular that he
had begun to see himself with prophetic eye in a congressional seat at
no distant day; and yet, withal, he was not wholly happy.

"Do you know," he said, "them fellers I made bets with in the tournament
got together this morning and decided, all of 'em, that they wouldn't
let me off? Jerusalem, it's most five hundred dollars!" And, looking
the picture of dismay, he told me his dilemma. It seems that his "dark
horse" was none other than the Wild Dog, who had been practising at home
for this tournament for nearly a year; and now that the Wild Dog was an
outlaw, he, of course, wouldn't and couldn't come to the Gap. And said
the Hon. Sam Budd:

"Them fellers says I bet I'd BRING IN a dark horse who would win this
tournament, and if I don't BRING him in, I lose just the same as though
I had brought him in and he hadn't won. An' I reckon they've got me."

"I guess they have."

"It would have been like pickin' money off a blackberry-bush, for I was
goin' to let the Wild Dog have that black horse o' mine--the steadiest
and fastest runner in this country--and my, how that fellow can pick off
the rings! He's been a-practising for a year, and I believe he could run
the point o' that spear of his through a lady's finger-ring."

"You'd better get somebody else."

"Ah--that's it. The Wild Dog sent word he'd send over another feller,
named Dave Branham, who has been practising with him, who's just as
good, he says, as he is. I'm looking for him at twelve o'clock, an' I'm
goin' to take him down an' see what he can do on that black horse o'
mine. But if he's no good, I lose five hundred, all right," and he
sloped away to his duties. For it was the Hon. Sam who was master
of ceremonies that day. He was due now to read the Declaration of
Independence in a poplar grove to all who would listen; he was to act as
umpire at the championship base-ball game in the afternoon, and he was
to give the "Charge" to the assembled knights before the tou