h
the vehicle would certainly be turned over and the entire party landed
in a hopeless muddle in the ditch; but nothing worse than a few feminine
screams occurred until they reached the place where the road entered the
Morristown turnpike.

Here Osgood espied another team coming up the main road, and as both
traps were about an equal distance from the fork, he considered it a
glorious chance for a race; so, giving his horses their heads, he urged
them into a run. The driver of the other four, as ready for sport as
Osgood, did the same, and the two traps came furiously on to where the
roads met. The men cheered while the women held on to their seats,
trembling with fright; and as the two traps came together at the fork,
the other coachman tried to crowd in front of Osgood by taking some of
the latter's road. There was no time to pull up, and seeing that his
only safety from a wicked upset was to beat his rival, Osgood called on
his horses for an extra spurt. The leaders were neck and neck, and the
stranger had crowded him so far toward the edge of the road that he felt
his hind wheel slipping down the embankment. The women shut their eyes
and screamed while the men prepared to jump, but Osgood, acting with
presence of mind, hit his rival's off-wheeler across the head with his
whip, and "toweled" his own wheelers a good stinging cut across the
shoulders. The wheel horse of the other trap, frightened at this sudden
attack, jumped toward the pole, and, with his weight, swayed the vehicle
toward the near side of the road, while Osgood's own wheelers sprang
forward under the lashing and drew the trap onto the road before it had
time to upset. Osgood darted ahead of his rival, and the party breathed
freer as all visions of broken limbs and mangled bodies vanished from
their frightened minds.

"Well done, old man," called Howard-Jones, who was himself a coaching
man. "I like sport, but such a lubberly bit of work as that ought not to
go unpunished."

"A man who will do a trick like that ought not to be trusted with a
donkey," replied Osgood, as he pulled his team together after the
excitement of the spurt.

"That's the trouble, nowadays," continued Howard-Jones. "After a lesson
or two in the park, at team work, chaps set up as experienced
coachmen."

"Who is the duffer, anyway?" called Duncan from behind.

"Jack Ashton. You know him, don't you?" replied Howard-Jones. "He has
the place just beyond Harry's."

"I ought t