h jockey.

Now, Mulligan was small, but he had the heart of a giant and the
courage of one conviction and two acquittals on charges of assault
and battery. In spite of his size--he could ride at ninety-eight
pounds--Mulligan was a man in years, a man who felt that his
employer had treated him like a child in money matters, and when
Pitkin called him a bow-legged little thief and an Irish ape, he was
putting a match to a powder magazine.

One retort led to another, and when Mulligan ran out of retorts he
responded with a piece of 2 by 4 scantling which he had been saving
for just such an emergency, and Pitkin lost interest in the
conversation.

Mulligan left him lying on the floor of the tackle-room, and though
he was in somewhat of a hurry to be gone he found time to say a few
words to old Gabe, who was sunning himself at the end of the barn.

"And I don't know what you can do about it," concluded the jockey,
"but anyway I've put you wise. If they ask you, just say that you
don't know which way I went."

That night Old Man Curry had a visitor who entered his tackle-room,
hat in hand and bowing low.

"Set down, Gabe," said the old horseman. "How's Pitkin by this time?"

"He got a headache," answered Gabe soberly.

"Humph!" snorted Curry. "Should think he would have. That boy fetched
him a pretty solid lick. Glad he didn't hurt him any worse--for the
boy's sake, I mean."

"Yes, suh," said Gabe. "Mist' Curry, you been mighty good to me, one
way'n anotheh, an' I'd like to ast yo' fo' some advice."

"Well," said the old man, "advice is like medicine, Gabe--easy to
give but hard to take. What's troublin' you now?"

"Mist' Curry, yo' 'membeh me tellin' yo' 'bout that Gen'al Duval colt
of mine--how he neveh did look the same to me since I got him?"

"Yes," answered Curry, "an' I've a'ready told you that you can't
prove anything on Pitkin. You may suspect that somebody switched them
colts on you, but unless----"

"'Scuse me, suh," interrupted Gabe, "but I got beyon' suspectin' it
now. I _knows_ it was done."

"You don't say!"

"Yes, suh, I got the proof. Mulligan, he say to me jus' befo' he
lights out, 'Gabe,' he say, 'that Smith colt, he belong to you by
rights. Pitkin, he pulls a switch afteh yo' went to bed that first
night.' He say he seen him do it."

"Mebbe the boy was just tryin' to stir up a little more trouble,"
suggested Old Man Curry.

"Ain't I tol' you he neveh did _look_ the same? Them colts s