ooked at it as though waiting for her.
Without a hint of her purpose, or a sign to disturb the deacon in his
final throes, she rose as the sleigh ran near its edge, and with a
spring which had many a time sent her lightly from the ground to the
bare back of a horse in the meadow, she cleared the robes and lit
plump in the drift. The deacon's horse knew before the deacon did that
something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond. With
his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came
fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking
his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the
squire as though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile
the squire made heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but
effort was useless, and finally concluding that he was practically
left standing, he veered off from the main road down a farm lane to
find some spot in which to hide the humiliation of his defeat. The
deacon, still going at a clipping gait, had one eye over his shoulder
as wary drivers always have on such occasions, and when he saw the
squire was off the track he slowed down and jogged along with the
apparent intention of continuing indefinitely. Presently an idea
struck him, and he looked around for the widow. She was not where he
had seen her last. Where was she? In the enthusiasm of victory he had
forgotten her. He was so dejected at the moment she had leaped that he
did not realize what she had done, and two minutes later he was so
elated that, shame on him! he did not care. With her, all was lost;
without her, all was won, and the deacon's greatest ambition was to
win. But now, with victory perched on his horse-collar, success his at
last, he thought of the widow, and he did care. He cared so much that
he almost threw his horse off his feet by the abrupt turn he gave him,
and back down the pike he flew as if a legion of squires were after
him.

He did not know what injury she might have sustained; She might have
been seriously hurt, if not actually killed. And why? Simply to make
it possible for him to win. The deacon shivered as he thought of it,
and urged his horse to greater speed. The squire, down the lane, saw
him whizzing along and accepted it profanely as an exhibition for his
especial benefit. The deacon now had forgotten the squire as he had
only so shortly before forgotten the widow. Two hundred yards from the
drift into