ndry long-tailed colts with long-tailed pedigrees; there
greedy Berkshires fattened themselves to abnormal proportions; and the
merinos could hardly walk, for the weight of their own rich wardrobes.
The well-to-do farmers of this section were hand-in-glove with the
town's people; they drove their trotters in every day or so to get
their mail, to chat with their cronies, to attend to their affairs in
court, to sell or to buy--their pleasures centred in the town, and
they turned the cold shoulder upon the country, which supported them,
and gave their influence to Colbury, accounting themselves an
integrant part of it. Thus, at the fairs the town claimed the honor
and glory. The blue ribbon decorated cattle and horses bred within ten
miles of the flaunting flag on the judges' stand, and the foaming
mountain-torrents and the placid stream in the valley beheld no
cerulean hues save those of the sky which they reflected.

The premium offered this year for the best rider was, as it happened,
a new feature, and excited especial interest. The country's blood was
up. Here was something for which it could fairly compete, with none of
the disadvantages of the false position in which it was placed. Hence
a prosperous landed proprietor, the leader of the rural faction,
dwelling midway between the town and the range of mountains that
bounded the county on the north and east, bethought himself one day of
Jenkins Hollis, whose famous riding had been the feature of a certain
dashing cavalry charge--once famous, too--forgotten now by all but the
men who, for the first and only time in their existence, penetrated
in those war days the blue mountains fencing in their county from the
outer world, and looked upon the alien life beyond that wooded
barrier. The experience of those four years, submerged in the whirling
rush of events elsewhere, survives in these eventless regions in a
dreamy, dispassionate sort of longevity. And Jenkins Hollis's feat of
riding stolidly--one could hardly say bravely--up an almost sheer
precipice to a flame-belching battery came suddenly into the landed
magnate's recollection with the gentle vapors and soothing aroma of a
meditative after-dinner pipe. Quivering with party spirit, Squire
Goodlet sent for Hollis and offered to lend him the best horse on the
place, and a saddle and bridle, if he would go down to Colbury and
beat those town fellows out on their own ground.

No misgivings had Hollis. The inordinate pe