CHAPTER VI.
Good Old Bess.
Supper was over at Shingle Hut, and we were all seated round the fire--all except Joe.

He was mousing.

He stood on the sofa with one ear to the wall in a listening attitude, and brandished a table-fork.
There were mice--mobs of them--between the slabs and the paper--layers of newspapers that had been pasted one on the other for years until they were an inch thick; and whenever Joe located a mouse he drove the fork into the wall and pinned it--or reckoned he did.
Dad sat pensively at one corner of the fire-place--Dave at the other with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his palms.
"Think you could ride a race, Dave ?" asked Dad.
"Yairs," answered Dave, without taking his eyes off the fire, or his chin from his palms--"could, I suppose, if I'd a pair o' lighter boots 'n these." Again they reflected.
Joe triumphantly held up the mutilated form of a murdered mouse and invited the household to "Look!" No one heeded him.
"Would your Mother's go on you ?" "Might," and Dave spat into the fire.
"Anyway," Dad went on, "we must have a go at this handicap with the old mare; it's worth trying for, and, believe me, now! she'll surprise a few of their flash hacks, will Bess." "Yairs, she can go all right." And Dave spat again into the fire.
"GO! I've never known anything to keep up with her.

Why, bless my soul, seventeen years ago, when old Redwood owned her, there was n't a horse in the district could come within coo-ee of her.

All she wants is a few feeds of corn and a gallop or two, and mark my words she'll show some of them the way." Some horse-races were being promoted by the shanty-keeper at the Overhaul--seven miles from our selection.