rst saw
him. Long standing in the cold numbs the muscles. It robs the legs of
their spring. Sudden starts, such as are made when you are called from
line after an hour's waiting, finish the business. Try as he might,
Bonfire could not step so high, could not carry a perfect crest. His
neck had lost its roundness, in his rump a crease had appeared.

To Dan also, came tribulation of his own making. He carried a flat brown
flask under the box and there were times when his driving was more a
matter of muscular habit than of mental acuteness. Twice he was
threatened with discharge and twice he solemnly promised reform. At last
the inevitable happened. Dan came one morning to Bonfire's stall, very
sober and very sad. He patted Bonfire and said good-by. Then he
disappeared.

Less than a week later two young hackneys, plump of neck, round of
quarter, springy of knee and hock, were brought to the stable. Bonfire
and Topsy were led out of their old stalls to return no more. They had
been worn out in the service and cast aside like a pair of old gloves.

Then did Bonfire enter upon a period of existence in which box-stalls,
crested quarter blankets, rubber-tired wheels and liveried drivers had
no part. It was a varied existence, filled with toil and hardship and
abuse; an existence for which the coddling one gets at Lochlynne Farm is
no fit preparation.

IV

Just where Broadway crosses Sixth Avenue at Thirty-third Street is to be
found a dingy, triangular little park plot in which a few gas-stunted,
smoke-stained trees make a brave attempt to keep alive. On two sides of
the triangle surface-cars whirl restlessly, while overhead the elevated
trains rattle and shriek. This part of the metropolis knows little
difference between day and night, for the cars never cease, the
arc-lights blaze from dusk until dawn and the pavements are never wholly
empty.

Locally the section is sometimes called "the Cabman's Graveyard." During
any hour of the twenty-four you may find waiting along the curb a line
of public carriages. By day you will sometimes see smartly kept hansoms,
well-groomed horses, and drivers in neat livery.

But at night the character of the line changes. The carriages are mostly
one-horse closed cabs, rickety as to wheels, with torn and faded
cushions, license numbers obscured by various devices and rate-cards
always missing. The horses are dilapidated, too; and the drivers, whom
you will generally find nodding on th