Boys will believe almost anything, when they get excited (having taken the trick from their fathers), but even the women were disappointed, when the galloping horse stopped short in the crowd, and from his withers shot forward, and fell with both hands full of mane, a personage not more august than the porter at Brockenhurst Station. “Catch the horse, you fool!” cried Rufus. “Cuss the horse,” said the porter, trying to draw breath; “better been under a train I had. Donʼt stand gaping, chawbacons. Is ever a sawbones, surgeon, doctor, or what the devil you call them in these outlandish parts, to be got for love or money?” “I am a sawbones,” said Rufus Hutton, coming forward with his utmost dignity; “and itʼs a mercy I donʼt saw yours, young man, if thatʼs all you know of riding.” The porter touched his hair instead of his hat (which was gone long ago), while the “chawbacons” rallied, and laughed at him, and one offered him a “zide–zaddle,” and all the women of the village felt that Dr. Hutton had quenched the porter, and vindicated Nowelhurst. “When you have recovered your breath, young man,” continued Rufus, pushing, as he always did, his advantage; “and thanked God for your escape from the first horse you ever mounted, perhaps you will tell us your errand, and we chawbacons will consider it.” A gruff haw–haw and some treble he–heʼs added to the porterʼs discomfiture, for he could not come to time yet, being now in the second tense of exhaustion, which is even worse than the first, being rather of the heart than lungs. “Station—Mr. Garnet—dead!” was all the man could utter, and that only in spasms, and with great chest–heavings. Rufus Hutton leaped on the horse in a moment, caught up old Channingʼs stick, and was out of sight in the summer dusk ere any one else in the crowd had done more than gape, and say, “Oh Lor!” By dint of skill he sped the old horse nearly as quickly to the station as the fury of Jehu had brought him thence, and landed him at the door with far less sign of exhaustion. Then walking into the little room, in the manner of a man who thoroughly knows his work, he saw a sight which never in this world will leave him.