id wonders when _soopled_,
huge, grave cart horses devouring the road with their shaggy hoofs,
wilful ponies, etc. You can imagine the wild hurry-skurry and fun, the
comic situations and upsets over a rough road, up and down places one
would be giddy to look at.

Well, the young farmers were in the habit of coming to my father, and
asking the loan of the mare to go and see a friend, etc., etc., praising
knowingly the fine points and virtues of his darling. Having through
life, with all his firmness of nature, an abhorrence of saying "No" to
any one, the interview generally ended with, "Well, Robert, you may have
her, but take care of her, and don't ride her fast." In an hour or two
Robert was riding the _bruse_, and flying away from the crowd, Gray
first, and the rest nowhere, and might be seen turning the corner of the
farm-house with the victorious bottle in his uplifted hand, the motley
pack panting vainly up the hill. This went on for long, and the gray was
famous, almost notorious, all over the Upper Ward; sometimes if she
appeared, no one would start, and she trotted the course. Partly from
his own personal abstraction from outward country life, and partly from
Uncle Johnston's sense of waggery keeping him from telling his friend of
the gray's last exploit at Hartree Mill, or her leaping over the "best
man" at Thriepland, my father was the last to hear of this equivocal
glory of "the minister's _meer_." Indeed, it was whispered she had once
won a whip at Lanark races. They still tell of his feats on this fine
creature, one of which he himself never alluded to without a feeling of
shame. He had an engagement to preach somewhere beyond the Clyde on a
Sabbath evening, and his excellent and attached friend and elder, Mr.
Kello of Lindsay-lands, accompanied him on his big plough horse. It was
to be in the open air, on the river side. When they got to the Clyde
they found it in full flood, heavy and sudden rains at the head of the
water having brought it down in a wild _spate_. On the opposite side
were the gathered people and the tent. Before Mr. Kello knew where he
was, there was his minister on the mare swimming across, and carried
down in a long diagonal, the people looking on in terror. He landed,
shook himself, and preached with his usual fervor. As I have said, he
never liked to speak of this bit of hardihood, and he never repeated it;
but it was like the man--there were the people, that was what he would
be at,