, "Who is that? What are you doing
there?"

There was no time for parley then. Gallegher felt that he had been taken
in the act, and that his only chance lay in open flight. He leaped up on
the box, pulling out the whip as he did so, and with a quick sweep
lashed the horse across the head and back. The animal sprang forward
with a snort, narrowly clearing the gate-post, and plunged off into the
darkness.

"Stop!" cried the officer.

So many of Gallegher's acquaintances among the 'longshoremen and mill
hands had been challenged in so much the same manner that Gallegher knew
what would probably follow if the challenge was disregarded. So he
slipped from his seat to the footboard below, and ducked his head.

The three reports of a pistol, which rang out briskly from behind him,
proved that his early training had given him a valuable fund of useful
miscellaneous knowledge.

"Don't you be scared," he said, reassuringly, to the horse; "he's firing
in the air."

The pistol-shots were answered by the impatient clangor of a
patrol-wagon's gong, and glancing over his shoulder Gallegher saw its
red and green lanterns tossing from side to side and looking in the
darkness like the side-lights of a yacht plunging forward in a storm.

"I hadn't bargained to race you against no patrol-wagons," said
Gallegher to his animal; "but if they want a race, we'll give them a
tough tussle for it, won't we?"

Philadelphia, lying four miles to the south, sent up a faint yellow glow
to the sky. It seemed very far away, and Gallegher's braggadocio grew
cold within him at the loneliness of his adventure and the thought of
the long ride before him.

It was still bitterly cold.

The rain and sleet beat through his clothes, and struck his skin with a
sharp, chilling touch that set him trembling.

Even the thought of the over-weighted patrol-wagon probably sticking in
the mud some safe distance in the rear, failed to cheer him, and the
excitement that had so far made him callous to the cold died out and
left him weaker and nervous.

But his horse was chilled with the long standing, and now leaped eagerly
forward, only too willing to warm the half-frozen blood in its veins.

"You're a good beast," said Gallegher, plaintively. "You've got more
nerve than me. Don't you go back on me now. Mr. Dwyer says we've got to
beat the town." Gallegher had no idea what time it was as he rode
through the night, but he knew he would be able to find out f