"I wish, plague take 'em!" he said with a snort, "that somebody would whirl in an' make a match that wouldn't smifflicate the whole house an' lot."
He lit the candle, and then proceeded to draw on his clothes. In the course of this proceeding, he lay back on the bed with his hands under his head. He lay thus for some minutes, and then suddenly jumped to his feet with an exclamation. He put on his clothes in a hurry, and went out to the stables, where he gave his horse a good feed—seventeen ears of corn and two bundles of fodder.
Then he returned to the house, and rummaged around until he found a pitcher of buttermilk and a pone of corn-bread, which he disposed of deliberately, and with great relish. This done, he changed his clothes, substituting for those he wore every day the suit he wore on Sundays and holidays. When all these preparations were complete, the hands of his watch stood at quarter past three. He had delayed and dillydallied in order to give his horse time to eat. The animal had taken advantage of the opportunity, for when Mr. Sanders went to the stables, the Racking Roan was playfully tossing the bare cobs about in the trough with his flexible upper lip.
"Be jigged ef your appetite ain't mighty nigh as good as mine," he remarked, whereupon the roan playfully bit at him. "Don't do that, my son," protested Mr. Sanders. "Can't you see I've got on my Sunday duds?"
To bridle and saddle the horse was a matter of a few moments only, and when Mr. Sanders mounted, the spirited horse was so evidently in for a frolic that he was going at a three-minute gait by the time the rider had thrown a leg over the saddle.
A horseback ride, when the weather is fine and the sun is shining, is a very pleasing experience, but it is not to be compared to a ride in the dark, provided you are on good terms with your horse, and are familiar with the country. You surrender yourself entirely to the creature's movements, and if he is a horse equipped with courage, common-sense and energy, you are lifted entirely out of your everyday life into the regions of romance and derring-do—whatever that may be. There is no other feeling like it, no other pleasure to be compared to it; all the rest smell of the earth.
"I'm sorter glad I lit that match," Mr. Sanders remarked to the horse. "It's like gittin' a whiff of the Bad Place, an' then breathin' the fresh air of heav'n." The reply of the roan was a sharp affirmative snort.
The sun was just rising when Mr. Sanders rode into Halcyondale. Coincident with his arrival, the train from Atlanta came in with a tremendous clatter. There was much creaking and clanking as it slowed up at the modest station. It paused just long enough for the mail-bag and a trunk to be thrown off with a bang, and then it went puffing away. Short as the pause had been, one of the passengers, in the person of Colonel Bolivar Blasengame, had managed to escape from it. The Colonel, with his valise in his hand, paused to watch the train out of sight, and then leisurely made his way toward his home. To reach that point, he was compelled to cross the public square, and as he emerged from the side street leading to the station, he met Mr. Sanders, who had also been watching the train.
"Hello, Colonel, how are you? We belong apparently to the early bird society."
"Good-morning, Mr. Sanders," replied the Colonel, with a smile of friendly welcome. "What wind has blown you over here?"