By dint of screaming and slapping, he urged her from a trot into a
gallop, which was scarcely an improvement as to speed, and certainly
not as to grace. It was like the gallop of an old cow. "Why don't ye go
'long?" he cried, despairingly.

Slap! slap! He knocked his own hat off with the loose end of the reins.
It fell under the wheels. He cast one look behind, to satisfy himself
that it had been very thoroughly run over and crushed into the dirt, and
left it to its fate.

Slap! slap! "Fire! fire!" Canter, canter, canter! Neighbors looked out
of their windows, and, recognizing Ducklow's wagon and old mare in such
an astonishing plight, and Ducklow himself, without his hat, rising from
his seat and reaching forward in wild attitudes, brandishing the reins,
and at the same time rending the azure with yells, thought he must be
insane.

He drove to the top of the hill, and, looking beyond, in expectation of
seeing his house wrapped in flames, discovered that the smoke proceeded
from a brush-heap which his neighbor Atkins was burning in a field near
by.

The revulsion of feeling that ensued was almost too much for the
excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little while
there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold sweat.
Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was now even
more difficult to stop her.

"Why, what has got into Ducklow's old mare? She's running away with him!