e and beholding only one resource--the tail
flaunting over the dasher--seized it and gave a seaman's sturdy pull.
The tail came away in his hands and left only a wildly brandishing
stump. Even in that moment of horror, the Cap'n had eyes to see and
wit to understand that this false tail was more of Marengo Todd's
horse-jockey guile. The look that he turned on the enterprising
doctor of caudal baldness was so perfectly diabolical that Marengo
chose what seemed the lesser of two evils. He precipitated himself
over the back of the seat, dropped to the ground as lightly as a cat,
ran wildly until he lost his footing, and dove into some wayside
alders. Cap'n Aaron Sproul was left alone with his newly acquired
property!

When he hove in sight of his own house he saw Louada Murilla on the
porch, gazing off at the smoke of the fire and evidently luxuriating
in the consciousness that it was her husband who was that day leading
the gallant forces of the Ancients.

As he stared wildly, home seemed his haven and the old house his rock
of safety. He did not understand enough about the vagaries of horses
and wagons to appreciate the risk. One rein still hung over the
dasher.

"Only one jib down-haul left of all the riggin'," he groaned, and
then grabbed it and surged on it.

The horse swung out of the road, the wagon careering wildly on two
wheels. Sproul crossed the corner of some ploughed land, swept down
a length of picket-fence, and came into his own lane, up which the
horse staggered, near the end of his endurance. The wagon swung and
came to grief against the stone hitching-post at the corner of the
porch. Cap'n Sproul, encumbered still with buckets and bag and
trumpet, floundered over the porch rail, through a tangled mass of
woodbine vines, and into the arms of his distracted wife.

For five minutes after she had supported him to a chair she could
do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes
goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole
replies to her were hollow sounds in his throat that sounded like
"unk!"

"Where have you been?" she cried. "All gurry, and wet as sop? If you
are hurt what made 'em let their Chief come home all alone with that
wild hoss? Aaron, can't you speak?"

He only flapped a muddy hand at her, and seemed to be beyond speech.
There was a dull, wondering look in his eyes, as though he were trying
to figure out some abstruse problem. He did not brighten unti