d shouted, "Room! Room there! Room for old Rack-o'-bones! Don't
breathe or he'll tumble down! Is he balky? Will he kick? Check him up!"

The peddler had been passing the Fair Grounds on his way through the
county, when some wag had hailed him and induced him to enter his horse
for the race. He was a little wiry man forty or fifty years old, dressed
in a soiled tweed coat and a boy's cloth cap.

He wanted to drive his horse, harnessed as it was in the tin-cart; but
the rest of us cried out against it; he therefore took the cart off the
forward wheels, and strapped a salt-box to the axle, to sit on. It was a
queer sort of "sulky." There was not much to choose, however; all the
horses were in rickety wagons, or battered gigs.

The drivers "changed over." They then got the animals as nearly in line
at the bar as possible, ready for the word "Go." Just then it was
discovered that one of the horses had a sharp stone adroitly inserted in
his shoe, so as to press up against the "frog" of his foot, and still
further cripple the poor beast. The judges promptly excluded this horse,
and reprimanded his owner.

"Go!" was then shouted. And they went. The crowd whooped and cheered and
whistled. Such a strident chorus of "Get-daps," "Geh-langs," "Hud-dups!"
and such frantic efforts to get those horses into a trot were never
before seen or heard in those parts! Each jostled and ran against others
in his wild efforts to get past his neighbors and rivals. One gig broke
down, and the driver had to mount on horseback; but he went the better
for that, and got past all the rest. Altogether, it was the noisiest,
dustiest, most harum-scarum race that can be imagined! They got around
at last, the most of them, and began to look about. The peddler's horse
was not to be seen.

"Where's Rack-o'-bones?" we asked each other. The shouts and
gesticulations of the spectators soon told us as to his whereabouts. The
peddler's horse had not yet got _half way round_! A snail could have
crawled almost as fast. The animal could not step more than six inches
at once, to save its life.

The most amusing part of it to the crowd was that the little peddler did
not understand about the race, and thought that instead of winning he
was hopelessly beaten. It took the judges some minutes to make him
comprehend that he had won the race. His small, greedy, gray eyes shone
when he was given the ten dollars.

"Don't envy him, boys," said one of the judges. "The man