But the deacon never thought of that.  Forgetting everything except his cherished ambition, he braced himself for the contest, took a twist hold on the lines, sent a sharp, quick call to his horse, and let him out for all that was in him.  The squire followed suit and the deacon.  The road was wide and the snow was worn down smooth.  The track couldn’t have been in better condition.  The Hopkins colors were not five rods behind the Hawkins colors as they got away.  For half a mile it was nip and tuck, the deacon encouraging his horse and the widow encouraging the deacon, and then the squire began creeping up.  The deacon’s horse was a good one, but he was not accustomed to hauling freight in a race.  A half-mile of it was as much as he could stand, and he weakened under the strain.

Not handicapped, the squire’s horse forged ahead, and as his nose pushed up to the dashboard of the deacon’s sleigh, that good man groaned in agonized disappointment and bitterness of spirit.  The widow was mad all over that Squire Hopkins should take such a mean advantage of his rival.  Why didn’t he wait till another time when the deacon was alone, as he was?  If she had her way she never would, speak to Squire Hopkins again, nor to his wife, either.  But her resentment was not helping the deacon’s horse to win.

Slowly the squire pulled closer to the front; the deacon’s horse, realizing what it meant to his master and to him, spurted bravely, but, struggle as gamely as he might, the odds were too many for him, and he dropped to the rear.  The squire shouted in triumph as he drew past the deacon, and the dejected Hawkins shrivelled into a heap on the seat, with only his hands sufficiently alive to hold the lines.  He had been beaten again, humiliated before a woman, and that, too, with the best horse that he could hope to put against the ever-conquering squire.  Here sank his fondest hopes, here ended his ambition.  From this on he would drive a mule or an automobile.  The fruit of his desire had turned to ashes in his mouth.

But no.  What of the widow?  She realized, if the deacon did not, that she, not the squire’s horse, had beaten the deacon’s, and she was ready to make what atonement she could.  As the squire passed ahead of the deacon she was stirred by a noble resolve.  A deep bed of drifted snow lay close by the side of the road not far in front.  It was soft and safe and she smiled as she looked at it as though waiting for her.  Without a hint of her purpose, or a sign to disturb the deacon in his final throes, she rose as the sleigh ran near its edge, and with a spring which had many a time sent her lightly from the ground to the bare back of a horse in the meadow, she cleared the robes and lit plump in the drift.  The deacon’s horse knew before the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond.  With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he