He dropped the foot, and snatched up another so suddenly that he nearly pulled the creature down; Teck caught the bridle and stroked her head, for she was restive, and then stood reassuringly beside her as he looked at the groups about. The polls were almost deserted. The crowd around the horses had grown denser. The general conversation had a wider range than the blacksmith’s remarks on the hoof, and the frog, and the shoe, and the nail. Dake and a man from North Carolina, a visitor and a cousin of a neighboring farmer, were turning the interval to account in the way of a horse-trade, and about them stood a breathlessly interested coterie, all eager to witness how the negotiation should terminate; all ready to advise, to dissuade, to instill suspicion; all marking with thrills of excitement that invariable phenomenon of bargain and sale,—when the buyer is willing, the vendor is reluctant and haggles, swinging back to eager entreaties and persuasive logic when the trade seems likely to fall through. Other wrangles now and then drowned their voices, and usurped the popular interest in the horse-trade. “Listen at Teck, now!” cried Jube Donnard, the parson’s son. “Teck ’lows that thar leetle mare o’ his’n, ez be sca’cely bridle-wise, kin go all the gaits. Naw, sir! Naw, sir! That mare can’t pace. I know all about that mare. She don’t kem of pacing stock. Daddy trot, mammy trot, colt _can’t_ pace!” Jube was in his own person the most pointed contradiction of his assertion. Piety as it was expressed in Broomsedge Cove proved itself there as elsewhere no hereditary quality, nor possessed of any traits of consanguinity. In Jube, the parson’s son, was filially repeated the long, lank paternal frame, the lantern jaw, the narrow head, the small excited gray eye, and the thin straight lips, one compressed upon the other. But the spirit which animated the youth was devoid of any similarity to that of the solemn ascetic religionist; and as Jube went at large in Broomsedge, it seemed a disrespect in some sort for him to look so like his father. A jovial caricature: the parson’s image with a jocose swagger; the enthusiast’s eye, lighted with a dancing leer or eclipsed by a flexible wink; a mouth grotesquely solemn and frequented by all the well-worn jests and songs of Broomsedge Cove. Even the old man himself sometimes paused to look wonderingly at this junketing blade, so like, yet so unlike, his recognition of himself.