The other drivers, their chins apprehensively over their shoulders, took to the inner oval of the course or to the side lines.  Todd, “Maria M.,” and Hector were, by general impulse, allowed to become the whole show.

When the mare came under the wire the first time two swipes attempted to stop her by the usual method of suddenly stretching a blanket before her.  She spread her legs and squatted.  Todd shot forward.  The mare had a long, stiff neck.  Her driver went astraddle of it and stuck there like a clothes-pin on a line.  Hector, in his cloud of dust, dove under the sulky and once more snapped the mare’s leg, this time with a vigor that brought a squeal of fright and pain out of her.  She went over the blanket and away again.  The dog, having received another kick, and evidently realizing that he was still “it” in this grotesque game of tag, kept up the chase.

No one who was at Smyrna fair that day ever remembered just how many times the antagonists circled the track.  But when the mare at last began to labor under the weight of her rider, a half-dozen men rushed out and anchored her.  The dog growled, dodged the men’s kicking feet, and went back under the stand.

“What is this, jedges, a dog-fight or a hoss-trot?” raved Todd, staggering in front of the stand and quivering his thin arms above his head.  “Whose is that dog?  I’ve got a right to kill him, and I’m going to.  Show yourself over that rail, you old sausage, with a plug hat on it, and tell me what you mean by a send-off like that!  What did I tell ye, trustees?  It’s happened.  I’ll kill that dog.”

“I want you to understand,” bellowed the Honorable Bickford, using the megaphone, “you are talking about my dog—­a dog that is worth more dollars than that old knock-kneed plug of yours has got hairs in her mane.  Put your hand on that dog, and you’ll go to State Prison.”

“Then I’ll bet a thousand dollars to a doughnut ye set that dog on me,” howled Marengo.  “I heard ye siss him!”

The Honorable J. Percival seemed to be getting more into the spirit of the occasion.

“You’re a cross-eyed, wart-nosed liar!” he retorted, with great alacrity.

“I’ll stump ye down here,” screamed Todd.  “I can lick you and your dog, both together.”

“If I was in your place,” said “Judge” Hiram Look, his interest in horse-trotting paling beside this more familiar phase of sport, “I’d go down and cuff his old chops.  You’ll have the crowd with you if you do.”

But Mr. Bickford, though trembling with rage, could not bring himself to correlate fisticuffs and dignity.

“He is a miserable, cheap horse-jockey, and I shall treat him with the contempt he deserves,” he blustered.  “If it hadn’t been for my dog his old boneyard could never have gone twice around the track, anyway.”

The crowds on the grand stand were bellowing:  “Trot hosses!  Shut up!  Trot hosses!”

“Er—­what other races have we?” inquired the Honorable J. Percival, as blandly as his violated feelings would allow.