e gave the off-wheeler so telling a cut round
the loins that the animal without any ceremony kicked over the trace.
Of course Tooler was compelled to pull up again immediately; and after
having adjusted the trace, and asking the animal seriously what he
meant, at the same time enforcing the question by giving him a blow on
the bony part of the nose, he prepared to remount; but just as he had
got his left foot upon the nave of the wheel, Valentine so admirably
imitated the sharp snapping growl of a dog in the front boot, that
Tooler started back as quickly as if he had been shot, while the
gentleman in black dropped the reins and almost jumped into the road.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the gentleman in black, trembling with
great energy; "How wrong, how very horribly wrong, of you, coachman,
not to tell me that a dog had been placed beneath my feet."

"Blarm their carcases!" cried Tooler, "they never told _me_ a dog was
shoved there. Lay _down_! We'll soon have yow out there together!"

"Not for the world!" cried the gentleman in black, as Tooler
approached the foot-board in order to open it. "Not for the world!
un-un-un-less you le-le-let me get down first. I have no desire to
pe-pe-perish of hydropho-phobia."

"Kip yar fut on the board then, sir, please," said Tooler, "we'll soon
have the varmint out o' that." So saying, he gathered up the reins,
remounted the box, and started off the horses again at full gallop.

The gentleman in black then began to explain to Tooler how utterly
inconceivable was the number of persons who had died of hydrophobia
within an almost unspeakable short space of time, in the immediate
vicinity of the residence of a friend of his in London; and just as
he had got into the marrow of a most excruciating description of the
intense mental and physical agony of which the disease in its worst
stage was productive, both he and Tooler suddenly sprang back, with
their feet in the air, and their heads between the knees of the
passengers behind them, on Valentine giving a loud growling snap, more
bitingly indicative of anger than before.

As Tooler had tightly hold of the reins when he made this involuntary
spring, the horses stopped on the instant, and allowed him time to
scramble up again without rendering the slow process dangerous.

"I cannot, I-I-I positively cannot," said the gentleman in black, who
had been thrown again into a dreadful state of excitement, "I cannot
sit here,--my nerves ca