er.

"By gad!--lynching is not half severe enough," fumed the Englishman.
"You chaps are all jolly fond of horses. That is why I dropped in. It
is an out and out beastly shame. The scoundrel should be horse-whipped
and run out of town."

"Say, sonny!--why don't you tell us what'n-the-hell's the matter with
your blinkin' hoss, 'stead o' jumpin' up and down like a chimpanzee,
and makin' us dizzy watchin' yer?" asked a hardened old bar-lounger.
"Stand still and let me lean my eyes up against somethin' steady for a
minute."

This brought DeRue Hannington to himself.

"Come out here, gentlemen, and see for yourselves!" he invited.
"Everybody come and have a look. I have her outside. A beastly, dirty,
rotten shame;--that's what I call it, and if there is any bally
justice in this Valley, I am going to see it jolly-well performed; by
George, I am!"

The idly curious crowd gathered to the doorway after Hannington. In a
few seconds thereafter, the wildest shouts of laughter and a medley of
caustic remarks caused Phil to get up to see what it all was about.

At the door, he looked over the heads of those on the lower steps of
the veranda, and there on the sidewalk stood the dejected Hannington
holding the bridle of what might have been a huge zebra gone wild on
the colour scheme, or an advertisement for a barber's shop.

It was evidently DeRue Hannington's white thoroughbred, but white no
longer. Phil went out to make a closer inspection.

What a sight she presented! She had been painted from head to hoofs in
broad stripes of red, white and blue. The white was her own natural
colour, but the red and blue were a gaudy, cheap paint still partly
wet. Nevertheless, the work was the work of an artist. The body was
done in graceful, sweeping lines, while the legs were circled red,
white and blue alternately down to each hoof. Even the animal's head
was emblazoned in the most fantastic manner.

Phil laughed uproariously. He could not help it. None could--excepting
possibly the man who owned the horse. To look at the animal gave one a
sensation of dizziness.

The old bar-lounger, who had been so anxious to know what the trouble
was about, was the first to give way under it.

"Holy mackinaw! I've got them again. Talk about seein' snakes," he
cried, turning toward the saloon door and putting his hands over his
eyes as if to shut out the sight, "hydrophobey, or delirious
tremblin's ain't got nothin' on that. Say, Heck!--mix me