e of lank proportions, the
winner of a certain great trotting-race which had delighted the mockers.

For two years Jowett had eyed Mr. Tripple's rawbone with a piratical
eye.

Though it had won only a single great race, that, in Jowett's view,
was its master's fault. As the Arabs say, however, Allah is with the
patient; and so it was that on the evening of the day in which Ingolby
met disaster, Mr. Tripple informed Jowett that he was willing to sell
his rawbone.

He was mounted on the gawky roadster when he met Gabriel Druse making
for the bridge. Their greeting was as cordial as hasty. Anxious as was
the Ry to learn what was going on in the towns, Jowett's mount caught
his eye. It was but a little time since they had met at Ingolby's
house, and they were both full of the grave events afoot, but here was a
horse-deal of consequence, and the bridle-rein was looseflung.

"Yes, I got it," said Jowett, with a chuckle, interpreting the old
man's look. "I got it for good--a wonder from Wonderville. Damned
queer-looking critter, but there, I guess we know what I've got.
Outside like a crinoline, inside like a pair of ankles of the Lady Jane
Plantagenet. Yes, I got it, Mr. Druse, got it dead-on!"

"How?" asked the Ry, feeling the clean fetlocks with affectionate
approval.

"He's off East, so he says," was the joyous reply; "sudden but sure,
and I dunno why. Anyway, he's got the door-handle offered, and he's off
without his camel." He stroked the neck of the bay lovingly. "How much?"

Jowett held up his fingers. The old man lifted his eyebrows quizzically.
"That-h'm! Does he preach as well as that?" he asked.

Jowett chuckled. "He knows the horse-country better than the New
Jerusalem, I guess; and I wasn't off my feed, nor hadn't lost my head
neither. I wanted that dust-hawk, and he knew it; but I got in on him
with the harness and the sulky. The bridle he got from a Mexican that
come up here a year ago, and went broke and then went dead; and there
being no padre, Tripple did the burying, and he took the bridle as his
fee, I s'pose. It had twenty dollars' worth of silver on it--look at
these conchs."

He trifled with the big beautiful buttons on the head-stall. "The
sulky's as good as new, and so's the harness almost; and there's the
nose-bag and the blankets, and a saddle and a monkey-wrench and two
bottles of horse-liniment, and odds and ends. I only paid that"--and he
held up his fingers again as though it was a sa