“Grub early?”
“I beg your pardon? Oh, no; had breakfast at eight, left at nine.”
“Phew!” said Abe, “thirty miles in four hours. Must be a good horse you’ve got.”
“It is rather,” said the stranger, with a curious smile.
“Hoss knocked up, I s’pose. Been riding too hard?”
“No, not at all. He’s good for another thirty miles before sunset,” and he gave us a wink.
Abe looked gravely at the stranger for some seconds, while one by one, on some excuse or other, we went outside to look at the stranger’s horse. We found a new pattern bicycle in the shed—new to us—and we returned to the room looking as much unconcerned as we could, but eager to get a rise out of Abe.
“That’s a fine animal,” said Long Jim; “clean in the limbs, with plenty of grit, and full of fire. Never turned a hair, too, what’s more!”
Abe looked at Long Jim, who was trying to suppress a smile; then he relit the pipe he had suffered to go out.
“Reminds me,” he said, “of that there hoss Topgallant, which carried me one hundred miles twixt sun-up and sun-down.” Fixing his eyes on—the stranger, he launched into a long yarn about some impossible incident. He was not, however, up to his usual form, being suspicious of our nods and winks, and the stranger was not astonished.