s
ready for the start homeward.

"Now, boys," he said, "you get in; Joe and Ford and Fuz on the back
seat, to hold down the greens. Frank, get up there, forward, while I
hitch in the ponies. These fellows are chuck full of mischief."

Very full, certainly; nor did Dab Kinzer know exactly what the matter
was for a minute or so after he seized the reins and sprang up beside
Frank Harley.

Then, indeed, as the ponies kicked and reared and plunged, he thought he
saw something work out from under their collars, and fall to the ground.
An acorn-burr is just the thing to worry a restive horse, if put in such
a place; but Joe and Fuz had hardly expected their "little joke" to be
so very successful as it was.

The ponies were off now!

"Joe," shouted Fuz, "let's jump!"

"Don't let 'em, Ford," exclaimed Dab, giving his whole energies to the
horses. "They'll break their necks if they do. Hold 'em in."

Ford, who was in the middle, promptly seized an arm of each of his
panic-stricken cousins, while Frank clambered over the seat to help him.
They were all down on the bottom now, serving as a, weight to hold the
evergreen branches, as the light wagon bounced and rattled along over
the smooth, level road.

In vain Dab pulled and pulled at the ponies. Run they would, and run
they did; and all he could do was to keep them fairly in the road.

Bracing strongly back, with the reins wound around his tough hands, and
with a look in his face that should have given courage even to the Hart
boys, Dab strained at his task as bravely as when he had stood at the
tiller of "The Swallow" in the storm.

There was no such thing as stopping those ponies.

And now, as they whirled along, even Dabney's face paled a little.

"I must reach the bridge before he does: he's just stupid enough to keep
right on."

It was very "stupid," indeed, for the driver of that one-horse
"truck-wagon" to try and reach the little narrow unrailed bridge first.
It was an old, used-up sort of a bridge, at best.

Dab loosened the reins a little, but could not use his whip.

"Why can't he stop!"

It was a moment of breathless anxiety, but the wagoner kept stolidly on.
There would be barely room to pass him on the road itself; none at all
on the narrow bridge.

The ponies did it.

They seemed to put on an extra touch of speed on their own account, just
then.

There was a rattle, a faint crash; and then, as the wheels of the two
vehicles almost touched e