"How about the horse and buggy?"

"Oh, we'll catch the horse in a day or two—it's a spoiled colt, anyway—and we'll patch up the buggy if she's patchable. If not, we'll leave it. Usual programme."

The stableman and Tally lit their pipes. Nobody seemed much interested now that the amusement was over. Bob owned a boyish desire to follow the wake of the cyclone, but in the presence of this imperturbability, he repressed his inclination.

"Some day the damn fool will bust his head open," said the liveryman, after a ruminative pause.

"I shouldn't think you'd rent him a horse," said Bob.

"He pays," yawned the other.

At the end of the half-hour the liveryman dove into his office for a coat, which he put on. This indicated that he contemplated exercising in the sun instead of sitting still in the shade.

"Well, let's look him up," said he. "This may be the time he busts his fool head."

"Hope not," was Tally's comment; "can't afford to lose a foreman."

But near the outskirts of town they met Roaring Dick limping painfully down the middle of the road. His hat was gone and he was liberally plastered with the soft mud of early spring.