"By Jingo, that's a fact!" said Moses, gathering up the reins, and calling out "gee-up" to the lean horses, who had been very glad to rest. The stage lumbered on, and left the pony-carriage free to move, after the baggage-wagon should have passed. But the baggage-wagon was driven by Moses' son, and he had no desire to shorten or renounce the fun. He did not carry the United States mail. He was probably not unfamiliar with Billingsgate, and was not shocked, only pleasantly excited, by the language employed. He even hurrahed a little, and laughed, and struck his hands upon his knees, as Jay was pitched back into the carriage, white and silenced. He liked a fight exceedingly, he did--any kind of a fight. As the stage moved on, and the viragoes leaned back and shook their fists at the little carriage, and the two men roared back their imprecations at it, he had not the heart to move on, and let the pony out into the road. He knew how the little beast would dash away out of sight down the hill, under Miss Rothermel's whip; they would be out of hearing in a second. No, he couldn't do a thing like that. It wasn't in him to spoil a fight. He laughed, and threw himself astride of the trunk, but didn't touch the reins, and didn't stir a step aside from blocking up the road. So it was that Missy got the full force of the parting maledictions; so it was that she got the full tide of Irish, mixed with the finer-grained shafts of French invective; so it was that she knew that Alphonsine had read the little note that she had sent in that morning to the relenting master, and that she was assured that she had made an enemy for life. "We'll be aven wid ye yet!" cried Bridget. "Mademoiselle shall hear from the 'worst of them all' again," sneered Alphonsine, darting a malignant look at her, from under her dark brows. Then, and not till then, did the young driver of the luggage-wagon "gee-up" to his horses and move on, puffing the smoke from his villainous cigar into the faces of the pony-carriage party, as he passed them, and looking infinitely content as he jolted on. He was not aware that he had done anything insolent or malicious. He did not know that the smell of his cigar, and the keen amusement of his look, had been the last, and perhaps most cutting, of the insults she had received. These wretches who had just disappeared from her presence were strangers and foreigners, so to speak; but this low boy represented her home, her village, her place of influence. Poor Missy! that was a bitter hour. Her vaudeville was ending in a horrid rout and rabble; she was sore and sick with the recollection of it. She had been dragged through the mud on the field where she had felt sure of triumph. What was the triumph, compared to the mud? She had succeeded in having them sent away; but they had humiliated her, oh! most unspeakably. The degradation of having to listen to such words, and to sit, impotent and silent before them, while they raged and reviled her!