speed! Talk of a
deer, the wind, or a steam-engine--their gait is not to be compared with
it. Nothing in nature I have ever seen run--except, it may be, a
Southern tornado, or a Sixth Ward politician--could hope to distance
that pig. He gained on the horse at every pace, and I soon saw that my
dollar was gone!

'In for a shilling in for a pound,' is the adage, so turning to the
Colonel, I said, as intelligibly as my horse's rapid steps, and my own
excited risibilities would allow:

'I see I've lost, but I'll go you another dollar that you can't beat the
pig!'

'No--sir!' the Colonel got out in the breaks of his laughing explosions;
'you can't hedge on me in that manner. I'll go a dollar that _you_ can't
do it, and your mare is the fastest on the road. She won me a thousand
not a month ago.'

'Well, I'll do it; Sandy to have the stakes.'

'Agreed,' said the Colonel, and away we went.

The swinish racer was about a hundred yards ahead when I gave the mare
the reins, and told her to go. And she did go. She flew against the wind
with a motion so rapid that my face, as it clove the air, felt as if
cutting its way through a solid body, and the trees, as we passed,
seemed taken with a panic, and running for dear life in the opposite
direction.

For a few moments I thought the mare was gaining, and I turned to the
Colonel with an exultant look.

'Don't shout till you win, my boy,' he called out from the distance
where I was fast leaving him and Sandy.

_I did not shout_, for spite of all my efforts the space between me and
the pig seemed to widen. Yet I kept on, determined to win, till, at the
end of a short half-mile, we reached the Waccamaw--the swine still a
hundred yards ahead! There his pig-ship halted, turned coolly around,
eyed me for a moment, then quietly and deliberately trotted off into the
woods.

A bend in the road kept my companions out of sight for a few moments,
and when they came up I had somewhat recovered my breath, though the
mare was blowing hard, and reeking with foam.

'Well,' said the Colonel, 'what do you think of our bacon 'as it runs'?'

'I think the Southern article can't be beat, whether raw or cooked,
standing or running.'

At this moment the hound, who had been leisurely jogging along in the
rear, disdaining to join in the race in which his dog of a master and I
had engaged, came up, and dashing quickly on to the river's edge, set up
a most dismal howling. The Colonel dismounted,