“Oh, Dod busted! that’s ’nuff; you has my pardon. I ought to know’d you didn’t ’tend it; ’sides, you jis scraped the skin. I war wus skeered than hurt, and if you’ll go to the house and beg me off from the old folks, I’ll never let on you cuddent tell copperas breeches from bar-skin.” Promising that I would use my influence, I proposed taking a drink, and that he should tell me how he had incurred his parent’s anger. He assented, and after we had inspected the cave, and seen that it held no other serpent than the one we craved, we entered its cool recess, and H. commenced: “You see, Doc, I’d heered so much from mam ’bout her dad’s Shumach and his nigger Swage, and the mile a minute, and the Croton water what was gin him, and how she bleved that if it wara’t for bettin’, and the cussin’ and fightin’, runnin’ race-hosses warn’t the sin folks said it war; and if they war anything to make her ’gret gettin’ religion and jinin’ the church, it war cos she couldn’t ’tend races, and have a race-colt of her own to comfort her ’clinin’ years, sich as her daddy had afore her; so I couldn’t rest for wantin’ to see a hoss-race, and go shares, p’raps, in the colt she war wishin’ for. “And then I’d think what sort of a hoss I’d want him to be—a quarter nag, a mile critter, or a hoss what could run (fur all mam says it can’t be did) a whole four mile at a stretch. Sometimes I think I’d rather own a quarter nag, for the suspense wouldn’t long be hung, and then we could run up the road to old Nick Bamer’s cow-pen, and Sally is almost allers out thar in the cool of the evenin’; and in course we wouldn’t be so cruel as to run the poor critter in the heat of the day. But then agin, I’d think I’d rather have a miler; for the ’citement would be greater, and we could run down the road to old Withers orchard, an his gal Miry is frightfully fond of sunnin’ herself thar, when she ’spects me ’long, and she’d hear of the race, certain; but then thar war the four-miler for my thinkin’, and I’d knew’d in such case the ’citement would be greatest of all, and you know, too, from dad’s stable to the grocery is jist four miles, an’ in case of any ’spute, all hands would be willin’ to run over, even if it had to be tried a dozen times. “So I never could ’cide on which sort of a colt to wish for. It was fust one, then t’others, till I was nearly ’stracted. So I found the best way was to get the hoss fust, and then ’termine whether it should be Sally Bamers, and the cow-pen; Miry Withers, and the peach orchard; or Spillman’s grocery, with the bald face.