Jeff smiled at such suggestion regarding the best horse within fifty miles of the “Half-way House.” Nevertheless he went briskly to the stable, led out and saddled a handsome grey mare, petting her the while, and keeping up a running commentary of caressing epithets to which Rabbit responded with a whinny and playful reaches after Jeff's red flannel sleeve. Whereat Jeff, having loved the horse until it was displaced by another mistress, grew grave and suddenly threw his arms around Rabbit's neck, and then taking Rabbit's nose, thrust it in the bosom of his shirt and held it there silently for a moment. Rabbit becoming uneasy, Jeff's mood changed too, and having caparisoned himself and charger in true vaquero style, not without a little Mexican dandyism as to the set of his doeskin trousers, and the tie of his red sash, put a sombrero rakishly on his curls and leaped into the saddle. Jeff was a fair rider in a country where riding was understood as a natural instinct, and not as a purely artificial habit of horse and rider, consequently he was not perched up, jockey fashion, with a knee-grip for his body, and a rein-rest for his arms on the beast's mouth, but rode with long, loose stirrups, his legs clasping the barrel of his horse, his single rein lying loose upon her neck, leaving her head free as the wind. After this fashion he had often emerged from a cloud of dust on the red mountain road, striking admiration into the hearts of the wayfarers and coach-passengers, and leaving a trail of pleasant incense in the dust behind him. It was therefore with considerable confidence in himself, and a little human vanity, that he dashed round the house, and threw his mare skilfully on her haunches exactly a foot before Miss Mayfield--himself a resplendent vision of flying riata, crimson scarf, fawn-colored trousers, and jingling silver spurs. “Kin I do anythin' for ye, miss, at the Forks?” Miss Mayfield looked up quietly. “I think not,” she said indifferently, as if the flaming-Jeff was a very common occurrence. Jeff here permitted the mare to bolt fifty yards, caught her up sharply, swung her round on her off hind heel, permitted her to paw the air once or twice with her white-stockinged fore-feet, and then, with another dash forward, pulled her up again just before she apparently took Miss Mayfield and her chair in a running leap. “Are you sure, miss?” asked Jeff, with a flushed face and a rather lugubrious voice. “Quite so, thank you,” she said coldly, looking past this centaur to the wooded mountain beyond. Jeff, thoroughly crushed, was pacing meekly away when a childlike voice stopped him. “If you are going near a carpenter's shop you might get a new shutter for my window; it blew away last night.” “It did, miss?” “Yes,” said the shrill voice of Aunt Sally, from the doorway, “in course it did! Ye must be crazy, Jeff, for thar it stands in No. 8, whar ye must have put it after ye picked it up outside.”