and
sniffed. Without doubt Old Jeff was frightened. Perhaps not for nine
generations had any of his ancestors caught a whiff of that peculiarly
terrifying scent of which every horse inherits knowledge and dread.

As for Calico, he had no need of such spur as inherited terror. He had
fearsomeness enough of his own to send him rearing and pawing the air
until the whiffle-trees rapped his knees. Old Jeff did not rear. He
stared and snorted and trembled. When he felt his mate spring forward in
the traces he went with him, ready to do anything in order to get away
from that heaving, swaying thing which was coming toward them.

"Whoa, ye pesky fools! Whoa, dod rot ye!" Uncle Enoch, wakened from the
half doze which he had been taking on the wagon-seat, now began to saw
on the lines. His shouts seemed to have aroused the heaving thing, for
it answered with a horrid, soul-chilling noise.

By this time Calico was leaping frantically, snorting at every jump and
forcing Old Jeff to keep pace. They were at the top of a long grade and
down the slope the loaded wagon rattled easily behind them. Uncle Enoch
did his best. With feet well braced he tugged at the lines and shouted,
all to no purpose. Never before had Calico and Old Jeff met a circus on
the move. Neither had they previously come into such close quarters with
an elephant. One does not expect such things on the Bangor road. At
least they did not. They proposed to get away from such terrors in the
shortest possible time.

Now the public ways of Maine are seldom macadamized. In places they are
laid out straight across and over the granite backbone of the
continent. The Bangor road is thus constructed in spots. This slope was
one of the spots where the bare ledge, with here and there six-inch
shelves and eroded gullies, offered a somewhat uneven surface to the
wheels. A well built Studebaker will stand a lot of this kind of
banging, but it is not wholly indestructible. So it happened that
half-way down the hill the left hind axle snapped at the hub. Thereupon
some two hundred dozen ears of early green-corn were strewn along the
flinty face of the highway, while Uncle Enoch was hurled, seat and all,
accompanied by four dozen eggs and ten pounds of Aunt Henrietta's best
butter, into the ditch.

When the circus caravan overtook him Uncle Enoch had captured the
runaways and was leading them back to where the wrecked wagon lay by the
roadside. More or less butter was mixed with