I sprang up, for a great wind seemed to be rushing around the hill. Then I gave a scream, for some wicked person had built a fence right across the road, and those five horses were galloping like mad right toward it. "Oh, stop them--stop them--for mercy's sake!" says I, a-clasping my hands, and pleading wildly to every one around. "They'll be killed--they don't see that awful fence." While I was screaming, the whole five horses came, one after another, sailed right over the fence, dived down like hen-hawks after a chicken, and away toward another fence that choked up the road. Before I could shriek out, and warn them, over they came, like a whirlwind, without touching the fence or seeming to care--over, and away up the road, taking one's breath with them. "Mercy on me! what a providential escape!" says I to the gentleman; "what wicked wretch could have heaped up things in the road? I do hope they'll be found out and sent to State's prison. Why, it's just as bad as blocking up a train of cars. Such nice-looking riders, too!" The gentleman looked a trifle puzzled, then he smiled a little funnily, and says he: "Perhaps you do not understand that this is a 'hurdle-race.'" "No," says I; "they told me that it would be horse-racing--nothing worse than that." "Well," says he, "it is nothing worse than that, only a little more dangerous, and to you ladies more interesting, because the riders are all gentlemen." "What, those men in the caps, gentlemen--not circus-riders, nor nothing?" He laughed, and says he: "I dare say no one of them has ever been in a circus since he left off tunics, but they have learned to hunt, and love these hard leaps." "You don't mean to say that they skiver over such fences on purpose?" says I. "Indeed they do, and build them higher and broader every year." "You don't say so," says I, feeling my eyes open wide. "They love the peril, for that increases the excitement." "What if some of them were to be flung head over heels?" "Oh, that has happened." "Not to-day?" "Yes, but fortunately the man was not killed." I felt myself a-growing pale. "But they don't know of it. Everybody is laughing," says I. "Yes, it is generally known, but that is a part of the excitement. In a crowd like this, it is difficult to realize trouble or death." "How strange!" says I, putting the handkerchief that I had torn with hard shaking into my pocket, with a deeply penitent feeling. "It is strange," says he; "but this is no place for deep feeling, or you would not see so many smiling faces around you, for a gentleman who owns some of the race-horses, and came up only a day or two ago to see them tried, is lying dead in his home now." My heart sank. I felt tears crowding up to my eyes. Death in one place--all this gorgeous confusion and wild gayety here. A lonely widow, weeping bitter tears; all these gay fluttering young people reckless and happy, in spite of it.