ally happened--a carriage had been
coming along the street from the left, driven rapidly, but with the pair
of fine horses under good command. Just before it reached the house of
Judge Owen, one of those troublesome boys who ought all to be sent to
Blackwell's Island from the twenty-fifth of June until the tenth of
July, had thrown a lighted "snake," or "chaser," under the belly of the
near horse as he passed. The animals had already become sufficiently
frightened by the fire-crackers thrown under them and the pistols
exploding at their ears; and at this crowning atrocity they became
altogether unmanageable. Spite of the exertions of the practised driver,
they shied violently to the left, breaking into a run at the same
moment, and the next instant one side of the carriage was whirled upon
the curb, so that the hind axle and wheel caught in the lamp-post,
happily not tearing apart or overturning the vehicle, but bringing-up
with such a shock that the driver was hurled from his seat and thrown to
the pavement between the maddened horses.

This state of affairs had drawn the scream from Aunt Martha, and at the
instant when Wallace reached the door the people in the carriage were
screaming but incapable of getting out, the horses were plunging to such
a degree that they must have broken loose in a moment, after making a
wreck of the carriage and trampling to death the poor fellow who lay
senseless under their feet. At the same time it seemed worth a dozen
lives to plunge into that storm of lashing hoofs and do anything to
rescue driver and riders from their peril.

"Help! help! oh, save them!--save the poor man--somebody!" cried both
the women on the piazza, at a breath; and "Help! help!" rung in a
woman's voice from the inside of the carriage. Fifteen or twenty persons
had already rushed up, but no one seemed disposed to risk his own life
to save others. The Colonel yet stood on one of the steps of the piazza,
apparently spell-bound.

"Colonel Bancker, you wanted to try courage with me a little while ago:
take hold of those horses, if you _dare_!" cried Frank Wallace, rushing
to the edge of the stoop. The Colonel neither spoke nor stirred.
"Coward!" they heard the young man cry, and the next instant--how, none
of them knew--he had rushed in upon the horses' heads, spite of their
lashing hoofs, had one or both by the bridles, and in an instant more
both horses were flung prostrate and helpless. The imminent danger over,