These weren't
the professor's exact words--But, anyway, Mae came to himself with a
sudden jerk, left with a great Scottish snort of disgust and the sound
of heavy boots along the floor; and after a resentful whisky at the
Royal, where they laughed at his scrooging bushy eyebrows, fierce
black eyes and his deadly-in-earnest denunciation of all humbugs and
imposters, he returned to the aforesaid van, let down the flaps,
buttoned the daft and "feekle" world out, and himself in, and then
retired some more and slept, as I have said, rolled in his blankets
and overcoats on a bed of cushions, and chaff-bag.
Harry Chatswood got down from his empty coach, and was helping the
yard boy take out the horses, when his eye fell on the remnant of a
roll of fencing wire standing by the stable wall in the light of the
lantern. Then an idea struck him unexpectedly, and his mind became
luminous. He unhooked the swinglebar, swung it up over his
"leader's" rump (he was driving only three horses that trip), and
hooked it on to the horns of the hames. Then he went inside (there
was another light there) and brought out a bridle and an old pair of
spurs that were hanging on the wall. He buckled on the spurs at the
chopping block, slipped the winkers off the leader and the bridle on,
and took up the fencing-wire, and started out the gate with the horse.
The boy gaped after him once, and then hurried to put up the other two
horses. He knew Harry Chatswood, and was in a hurry to see what he
would be up to.
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