The scenery was beautiful; the bluffs were draped in clustering red berries, and the woods old gold and crimson. The water foamed over the lime rocks, glowing iridescent in the sun, and the air was bracing as we buzzed along. _Honk! Honk!_ "Let her out!" I cried, as a touch of speed mania got into me. "Say, I see how it is," I said, "why a man soon gets the speed mania in him. Horsemen can’t blame you, for they have got it, too." "Oh, we’re riding," he cried. "You have an hour yet." We were indeed riding, along a narrow path of the road rising to a rather abrupt hill. Rising and peeping over, I saw a long procession of creeping things, their ears just shining above the hill we were both ascending. "Halt! Stop!" I cried. It was too late, everlastingly too late! We were meeting a negro funeral procession, that of good old Uncle Thomas, as good an old time darky as ever lived. I had known him well, a fellow of infinite jest. But I did not recognize him promptly now. I hate to write what followed. I felt faint and sick. Be it known that every negro loves to be buried behind white mules. It is his glory and his religion. This kind was hauling Uncle Thomas. Now, a white mule is an old mule, and the older the mule, the bigger the fool, and when they peeped over the top of that hill, only to butt into a goggle-eyed demon, they did what mules always do. When I first saw them I was looking at the north end of that negro hearse. The next instant I was looking at the south end. And as the thing turned over once to adjust itself to different direction, a venerable old darkey shot out of the rear end of that hearse, followed by a two-dollar coffin, and everything in that two miles of vehicles turned tail at the same time. I jumped out, grabbing my hunting coat, which I knew held a flask of whiskey, and rushed pell-mell through the woods for the creek bank. All I wanted was a little water in that whiskey. After satisfying myself I would not faint, I went back in time to see that everything had been fixed and the procession headed north again. "No, sah, it didn’t hurt Brer Thomas," the preacher was explaining to Horace; "but it did upsot some of the sisterin, an’ they fainted when he come outer the back end of that kerridge so nachul an’ briefly. No, sah; nobody’s hurt, sah; it wuz jes’ a sivigerus accerdent." "How much money have you, Horace? I’ve spent all mine on dead and registered cats," I said, bitterly. He had plenty, and tipped the whole two miles of them, as they passed by, singing: "_Jordan is a hard road to travel._" Never had that old song seemed so real to me! "I stop right here," I said, after assuring myself that I would not faint again. "The sun is setting; we’ve been out all day, and found nothing but a cat and a corpse." Our experience had taken our nerve, and we waited two hours by the roadside, way after dark, until we’d seen everything we met in the morning go back home.