Something had happened. The little filly felt the reins relax and a kindly chirrup come from her driver. In a twinkling, in the whir of a spinning wheel, she was up with the big fellow, half frightened at her own speed, half doubting that it was really she who did it, half sobbing with the keen thrill of it, like a great singer who for the first time hears her own voice filling a great hall. "_Princewood! Princewood!_" shouted the crowd around their idol, the General, "_Princewood’s broke the record!_" The old General rose in happy anticipation: "Yes, boys, it looks like the record is busted by—" Here his jaw dropped as if paralyzed; for his trained eye took in the situation and the word died in his mouth. What was that little bay thing that had so gamely collared his big horse? Who is that quiet-looking fellow in the soft hat handling the reins like a veteran and leading the march like Stonewall’s Foot-Cavalry in the Valley? His grandson, Jack, was in a cart; this man sat in a sulky. And Jack was driving a little limp-waisted, hollow-flanked— "Who the devil—" he began, when someone clinging to his middle finger looked up, great smiles chasing tears down her cheeks and so excited she could scarcely breathe. "Why, it’s Little Sister, Grandpa! Now isn’t she just too sweet for anything?" The next instant the little filly laughed in the big pacer’s face, who had quit in a tangled break, as much as to say: "_You big braggart duffer, have you quit already?_" and then, like a homing pigeon loosed for the first time, she sailed away from the field. "Princewood—Princewood has broke the record—" shouted the farmer who hadn’t caught on and was shouting for Princewood, but was looking at the champion pumpkin in the window of the Agricultural Hall. And then the old General lost his head and what little religion he had left. For he jumped on a bench, his wooden leg rattling as he danced up and down, like a flock of goats in a barn loft, and this is what the town crier in the courthouse window, a mile away, heard him yelling: "_Damn Princewood! Damn the record! It’s Little Sister—Little Sister—my own mare—old Betty’s filly. I rode her fifteen years! I rode her dam—_" "Oh—" sang out mockingly a beautiful girl, sitting her horse beside him, with a laugh that sounded like a wood thrush’s. "But I’ve won a saddle and a seal-skin cloak and the sweetest mare in the world! Say, Braggy," for Braxton Bragg just then drove in, the last of the whole procession—"that engagement is all off, isn’t it?" Then Uncle Jack, who had stopped and got out of the sulky, came up, his face aglow. And she, her eyes still fired to starry beauty, leaned from the saddle and kissed him. "You darling Jack, how can I ever get even for this?"