orner in a hurry. After
that alteration it made a beautiful salting-machine, if you held tight,
because there was nothing to catch your feet when you fell out, and the
slats rattled tunes.

One Sunday afternoon we went out with the salt as usual. It was a
broiling hot day, and we could not find the horses anywhere till we let
Tedda Gabler, the bobtailed mare who throws up the dirt with her big
hooves exactly as a tedder throws hay, have her head. Clever as she is,
she tipped the coupe over in a hidden brook before she came out on a
ledge of rock where all the horses had gathered, and were switching
flies. The Deacon was the first to call to her. He is a very dark
iron-grey four-year-old, son of Grandee. He has been handled since he
was two, was driven in a light cart before he was three, and now ranks
as an absolutely steady lady's horse--proof against steam-rollers,
grade-crossings, and street processions.

"Salt!" said the Deacon, joyfully. "You're dreffle late, Tedda."

"Any--any place to cramp the coupe?" Tedda panted. "It weighs turr'ble
this weather. I'd 'a' come sooner, but they didn't know what they
wanted--ner haow. Fell out twice, both of 'em. I don't understand sech
foolishness."

"You look consider'ble het up. 'Guess you'd better cramp her under them
pines, an' cool off a piece."

Tedda scrambled on the ledge, and cramped the coupe in the shade of a
tiny little wood of pines, while my companion and I lay down among the
brown, silky needles, and gasped. All the home horses were gathered
round us, enjoying their Sunday leisure.

There were Rod and Rick, the seniors on the farm. They were the regular
road-pair, bay with black points, full brothers, aged, sons of
a Hambletonian sire and a Morgan dam. There were Nip and Tuck,
seal-browns, rising six, brother and sister, Black Hawks by birth,
perfectly matched, just finishing their education, and as handsome a
pair as man could wish to find in a forty-mile drive. There was Muldoon,
our ex-car-horse, bought at a venture, and any colour you choose that
is not white; and Tweezy, who comes from Kentucky, with an affliction of
his left hip, which makes him a little uncertain how his hind legs are
moving. He and Muldoon had been hauling gravel all the week for our new
road. The Deacon you know already. Last of all, and eating something,
was our faithful Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the black buggy-horse, who
had seen us through every state of weather and road, the