t all likely he'd
spec'late in them without saying something to _me_ about it. No, he
couldn't have any without my knowing it, I'm sure."

How demure, how innocent she looked, plying her knitting-needle, and
stopping to take up a stitch! How little at that moment she knew of
Ducklow's trouble and its terrible cause!

Ducklow's first impulse was to drive on and endeavor at all hazards to
snatch the bonds from the flames. His next was to return and alarm his
neighbors and obtain their assistance. But a minute's delay might be
fatal: so he drove on, screaming, "Fire! fire!" at the top of his voice.

But the old mare was a slow-footed animal; and Ducklow had no whip. He
reached forward and struck her with the reins.

"Git up! git up!--Fire! fire!" screamed Ducklow. "Oh, them bonds! them
bonds! Why didn't I give the money to Reuben? Fire! fire! fire!"

By dint of screaming and slapping, he urged her from a trot into a
gallop, which was scarcely an improvement as to speed, and certainly
not as to grace. It was like the gallop of an old cow. "Why don't ye go
'long?" he cried, despairingly.

Slap! slap! He knocked his own hat off with the loose end of the reins.
It fell under the wheels. He cast one look behind, to satisfy himself
that it had been very thoroughly run over and crushed into the dirt, and
left it to its fate.

Slap! slap! "Fire! fire!" Canter, canter, canter! Neighbors looked out
of their windows, and, recognizing Ducklow's wagon and old mare in such
an astonishing plight, and Ducklow himself, without his hat, rising from
his seat and reaching forward in wild attitudes, brandishing the reins,
and at the same time rending the azure with yells, thought he must be
insane.

He drove to the top of the hill, and, looking beyond, in expectation of
seeing his house wrapped in flames, discovered that the smoke proceeded
from a brush-heap which his neighbor Atkins was burning in a field near
by.

The revulsion of feeling that ensued was almost too much for the
excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little while
there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold sweat.
Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was now even
more difficult to stop her.

"Why, what has got into Ducklow's old mare? She's running away with him!
Who ever heard of such a thing!" And Atkins, watching the ludicrous
spectacle from his field, became almost as weak from laughter as Ducklow
was from t