t forward. The
mare had a long, stiff neck. Her driver went astraddle of it and stuck
there like a clothes-pin on a line. Hector, in his cloud of dust,
dove under the sulky and once more snapped the mare's leg, this time
with a vigor that brought a squeal of fright and pain out of her.
She went over the blanket and away again. The dog, having received
another kick, and evidently realizing that he was still "it" in this
grotesque game of tag, kept up the chase.

No one who was at Smyrna fair that day ever remembered just how many
times the antagonists circled the track. But when the mare at last
began to labor under the weight of her rider, a half-dozen men rushed
out and anchored her. The dog growled, dodged the men's kicking feet,
and went back under the stand.

"What is this, jedges, a dog-fight or a hoss-trot?" raved Todd,
staggering in front of the stand and quivering his thin arms above
his head. "Whose is that dog? I've got a right to kill him, and I'm
going to. Show yourself over that rail, you old sausage, with a plug
hat on it, and tell me what you mean by a send-off like that! What
did I tell ye, trustees? It's happened. I'll kill that dog."

"I want you to understand," bellowed the Honorable Bickford, using
the megaphone, "you are talking about my dog--a dog that is worth
more dollars than that old knock-kneed plug of yours has got hairs
in her mane. Put your hand on that dog, and you'll go to State Prison."

"Then I'll bet a thousand dollars to a doughnut ye set that dog on
me," howled Marengo. "I heard ye siss him!"

The Honorable J. Percival seemed to be getting more into the spirit
of the occasion.

"You're a cross-eyed, wart-nosed liar!" he retorted, with great
alacrity.

"I'll stump ye down here," screamed Todd. "I can lick you and your
dog, both together."

"If I was in your place," said "Judge" Hiram Look, his interest in
horse-trotting paling beside this more familiar phase of sport, "I'd
go down and cuff his old chops. You'll have the crowd with you if
you do."

But Mr. Bickford, though trembling with rage, could not bring himself
to correlate fisticuffs and dignity.

"He is a miserable, cheap horse-jockey, and I shall treat him with
the contempt he deserves," he blustered. "If it hadn't been for my
dog his old boneyard could never have gone twice around the track,
anyway."

The crowds on the grand stand were bellowing: "Trot hosses! Shut up!
Trot hosses!"

"Er--what other races ha