t, having once seen it, one
could hardly forget.

"Gee whilikins!" said Uncle Enoch softly to himself, as if fearful of
betraying some newly discovered secret.

But Old Jeff was moved to no such reticence. Lifting his head over the
shoulders of the crowd he pointed his ears and gave vent to a quick,
glad whinny of recognition. The "far-famed Arabian," turning so sharply
that the unwary groom was knocked sprawling, looked hard at the humble
farm-horse, and then, with an answering high-pitched neigh, dashed
through the quickly scattering spectators.

It was a moment of surprises. The Bareback Queen of the World was
startled out of her day-dream to find her "Arabian steed" rubbing noses
with a ragged-coated horse hitched to a battered farm-wagon, in which
sat a chin-whiskered old fellow who grinned expansively and slyly winked
at her over the horses' heads.

"It's all right, ma'am, I won't let on," he said.

Before she could reply, the groom, who had rescued his cockaded hat and
his presence of mind, rushed in and dragged the far-famed steed back
into the line of procession.

"Wall, I swan to man, ef Old Jeff didn't know that air Calicker afore I
did," declared Uncle Enoch, as he described the affair to Aunt
Henrietta; "an' me that raised him from a colt. I do swan to man!"

Mlle. Zaretti did not "swan to man," whatever that may be, but to this
day she marvels concerning the one and only occasion when her trusted
Calico disturbed the progress of the Grandest Aggregation's unparalleled
street pageant.

OLD SILVER

A STORY OF THE GRAY HORSE TRUCK

Down in the heart of the skyscraper district, keeping watch and ward
over those presumptuous, man-made cliffs around which commerce heaps its
Fundy tides, you will find, unhandsomely housed on a side street, a hook
and ladder company, known unofficially and intimately throughout the
department as the Gray Horse Truck.

Much like a big family is a fire company. It has seasons of good
fortune, when there are neither sick leaves nor hospital cases to
report; and it has periods of misfortune, when trouble and disaster
stalk abruptly through the ranks. Gray Horse Truck company is no
exception. Calm prosperity it has enjoyed, and of swift, unexpected
tragedy it has had full measure. Yet its longest mourning and most
sincere, was when it lost Old Silver.

Although some of the men of Gray Horse Truck had seen more than ten
years' continuous service in the house, not