d pacer hugging the mare's sulky
wheels like a demon. Even Travis had time to notice that the old man
had done something to steady the pacer, for how like a steadied ship
did he fly along!

Driving, driving, driving--they flew--they fought it out. Not a
muscle moved in the old man's body. Like a marble statue he sat and
drove. Only his lips kept moving as if talking to his horse, so close
that Travis heard him: "It's God's way, Ben Butler, God's
way--faith,--the lines of faith--'He leadeth me--He leadeth me'!"

Up--up--came the pacer fearless with frictionless gait, pacing like a
wild mustang-king of the desert, gleaming in sweat, white covered
with dust, rolling like a cloud of fire. The old man sang soft and
low:

"He leadeth me, O blessed thought,
O word with heavenly comfort fraught,
Whate'er I do, whate'er I be,
Still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me."

Inch by inch he came up. And now the home stretch, and the old pacer
well up, collaring the flying mare and pacing her neck to neck.

Travis smiled hard and cruel as he drew out his whip and circling it
around his head, uttered again, amid fierce crackling, his Indian
yell: "Hi--hi--there--ho--ha--ho--hi--hi--e--e!"

But the old pacer swerved not a line, and Travis, white and
frightened now with a terrible, bitter fear that tightened around his
heart and flashed in his eyes like the first swift crackle of
lightning before the blow of thunder, brought his whip down on his
own mare, welting her from withers to rump in a last desperate
chance.

Gamely she responded and forged ahead--the old pacer was beaten!

They thundered along, Travis whipping his mare at every stride. She
stood it like the standard-bred she was, and never winced, then she
forged ahead farther, and farther, and held the old pacer anchored at
her wheels, and the wire not fifty feet away!

There was nothing left for the old man to do--with tears streaming
down his cheeks he shouted--"Ben Butler, Ben Butler--it's God's
way--the chastening rod--" and his whip fell like a blade of fire on
the old horse's flank.

It stung him to madness. The Bishop striking him, the old man he
loved, and who never struck! He shook his great ugly head like a
maddened bull and sprang savagely at the wire, where the silken thing
flaunted in his face in a burst of speed that left all behind. Nor
could the old man stop him after he shot past it, for his flank
fluttered like a cyclone of fire