imagined top-rail of the imagined panel
and with hind heels drawn well in under her, descended and continued on
her circling way, a keen-eyed spectator, all bent double though he was,
alongside the ring, and beating himself in the short ribs, caught a
flashing glimpse of a strong but narrow strap which bound the rider's
ankles to the saddle-girth and which, through the ordered march of the
parade, had been safely hidden from view behind the ornament housings of
the broad Spanish stirrups. Cump Glass had done his fiendish work well;
those straps strained, but they held.

"Name of Glory!" shouted out the observer. "He done tie hisse'f on! He
done tie hisse'f--" Overcome he choked.

With a great sweeping, swooping heave Mittie May made the last leap. And
then at the precise second when the music stopped, the leathern thongs
parted, and as the burden on her tumbled off and lay struggling in the
dust, Mittie May swerved from the ring and, magically and
instantaneously becoming once more Judge Priest's staidly respectable
old buggy-mare, stood waiting for Jeff Poindexter to come and lead her
out of all this shrieking, whooping jam of folks back to her stable. And
Jeff came. He had been there all the time. It was against his supporting
frame that Ophelia had slanted limply the while she laughed.

Here the curtain is lowered for two seconds to denote the passage of two
days. At its rise Jeff Poindexter and Gumbo Rollins are discovered
sitting side by side on the back step of a cabin in the Plunket's Hill
neighborhood.

"An' so they ain't nobody seen him sence?" It is Jeff who is speaking.

"So they tells me," answers Gumbo. "Ain't nary soul seen hair nur hide
of him frum the moment he riz out 'en that ring an' tuk his foot in his
hand an' marviled further. Yas, suh, the pertracted meetin' will have to
worry 'long the best way it kin 'thout its champion purty man. Well,
sometimes it seems lak these things turns out fur the bes'. It suttin'ly
would damage his lacinated feelin's still mo' ef he wus yere an' heared
folks all over town callin' him the Jazzed-up Circus Rider."

"I got a better name fur him 'en that," says Jeff, "Whiffletit."

"W'ich?" asks Gumbo.

Seemingly Jeff has not heard his friend's question. In an undertone, and
as though seeking to recall the words of a given formula, he communes
with himself, "Fust you baits him wid the cheese. An' 'en w'en he nibble
the cheese, he git all swelled up an' 'en whilst