“I’m very much obliged to you, sir,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about that law.”
The man was a tall and rather coarsely dressed person, wearing a linen coat and high boots, into which his trousers were thrust.
As Phil looked up at him, he saw that he had a very pleasant and kindly countenance.
“You’ve ridden your horse pretty hard,” said the man. “He looks as if you had been salting him down. Did you come in town for a doctor?”
“No,” said Phil.
And then he explained how Jouncer had happened to travel so fast.
“If you want to race a horse,” said the other,— “that is, if you do such things at all,—you ought to wait for cooler weather. It is pretty hard on a beast to make him run on a day like this.”
“But I didn’t make him do much of it,” said Phil. “He did almost all the hard running on his own account.”
“I tell you what it is,” said the man, with a smile, “when a horse has a human bein’ on his back, nearly all the brains of that party is to be found under the rider’s hat; and if them brains ain’t put to good use there’s always a pretty fair chance of trouble.”
Phil agreed that this was so, and, mounting Jouncer, he bade the man good-by and rode homeward.