No one who was at Smyrna fair that day ever remembered just how many times the antagonists circled the track. But when the mare at last began to labor under the weight of her rider, a half-dozen men rushed out and anchored her. The dog growled, dodged the men's kicking feet, and went back under the stand. "What is this, jedges, a dog-fight or a hoss-trot?" raved Todd, staggering in front of the stand and quivering his thin arms above his head. "Whose is that dog? I've got a right to kill him, and I'm going to. Show yourself over that rail, you old sausage, with a plug hat on it, and tell me what you mean by a send-off like that! What did I tell ye, trustees? It's happened. I'll kill that dog." "I want you to understand," bellowed the Honorable Bickford, using the megaphone, "you are talking about my dog--a dog that is worth more dollars than that old knock-kneed plug of yours has got hairs in her mane. Put your hand on that dog, and you'll go to State Prison." "Then I'll bet a thousand dollars to a doughnut ye set that dog on me," howled Marengo. "I heard ye siss him!" The Honorable J. Percival seemed to be getting more into the spirit of the occasion. "You're a cross-eyed, wart-nosed liar!" he retorted, with great alacrity. "I'll stump ye down here," screamed Todd. "I can lick you and your dog, both together." "If I was in your place," said "Judge" Hiram Look, his interest in horse-trotting paling beside this more familiar phase of sport, "I'd go down and cuff his old chops. You'll have the crowd with you if you do." But Mr. Bickford, though trembling with rage, could not bring himself to correlate fisticuffs and dignity. "He is a miserable, cheap horse-jockey, and I shall treat him with the contempt he deserves," he blustered. "If it hadn't been for my dog his old boneyard could never have gone twice around the track, anyway." The crowds on the grand stand were bellowing: "Trot hosses! Shut up! Trot hosses!" "Er--what other races have we?" inquired the Honorable J. Percival, as blandly as his violated feelings would allow. "We haven't had any yet," cried a new voice in the stand--the wrathful voice of Trustee Silas Wallace, of the horse department. After quite a struggle he had managed to tip President Kitchen off the trap-door and had ascended. "We never will have any, either," he shouted, shaking his finger under the president's nose. "What did I tell you would happen? We'll be reported to the National Association." The crowd across the way roared and barked like beasts of prey, and the insistent and shrill staccato of Marengo Todd sounded over all. Cap'n Sproul deliberately and with much decision took off his silk hat and held it toward the Honorable Bickford. "I resign!" he said. "I was shanghaied into this thing against my good judgment, and it's come out just as I expected it would. It ain't no place for me, and I resign!"