d, "Just so--they are staring
petrified at the remains."

But when I got amongst that bunch, there sat Ida in her buggy and nobody
hurt, not even the horse or the vehicle. Ida was pale but serene. As
I came tearing down, she smiled back over her shoulder at me and
said, "Well, we're alive yet, aren't we?" A miracle had been
performed--nothing else.

You see Lewis, the prodigious, humped upon his front seat, had been
toiling up, on his load of manure; he saw the frantic horse plunging
down the hill toward him, on a full gallop, throwing his heels as high
as a man's head at every jump. So Lewis turned his team diagonally
across the road just at the "turn," thus making a V with the fence--the
running horse could not escape that, but must enter it. Then Lewis
sprang to the ground and stood in this V. He gathered his vast strength,
and with a perfect Creedmoor aim he seized the gray horse's bit as he
plunged by and fetched him up standing!

It was down hill, mind you. Ten feet further down hill neither Lewis
nor any other man could have saved them, for they would have been on the
abrupt "turn," then. But how this miracle was ever accomplished at
all, by human strength, generalship and accuracy, is clean beyond my
comprehension--and grows more so the more I go and examine the ground
and try to believe it was actually done. I know one thing, well; if
Lewis had missed his aim he would have been killed on the spot in the
trap he had made for himself, and we should have found the rest of the
remains away down at the bottom of the steep ravine.

Ten minutes later Theodore and I arrived opposite the house, with the
servants straggling after us, and shouted to the distracted group on the
porch, "Everybody safe!"

Believe it? Why how could they? They knew the road perfectly. We might
as well have said it to people who had seen their friends go over
Niagara.

However, we convinced them; and then, instead of saying something, or
going on crying, they grew very still--words could not express it, I
suppose.

Nobody could do anything that night, or sleep, either; but there was a
deal of moving talk, with long pauses between pictures of that flying
carriage, these pauses represented--this picture intruded itself all the
time and disjointed the talk.

But yesterday evening late, when Lewis arrived from down town he
found his supper spread, and some presents of books there, with very
complimentary writings on the fly-leaves, and c