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“That’s all; that’s all, parson,” answered the deacon, gayly, as he nudged him vigorously back, “that’s all we are, either of us,” and, laughing as merrily as boys, the two glided away in the sleigh.

Well, perhaps they didn’t have fun that day–those two old boys that had started out with the feeling that they were “only sixteen,” and bound to make “a day of it.” And they did make a day of it, in fact, and such a day as neither had had for forty years. For, first, they went to Bartlett’s hill, where the boys and girls were coasting, and coasted with them for a full hour; and then it was discovered by the younger portion of his flock that the parson was not an old, stiff, solemn, surly poke, as they had thought, but a pleasant, good-natured, kindly soul, who could take and give a joke and steer a sled as well as the smartest boy in the crowd; and when it came to snow-balling, he could send a ball further than Bill Sykes himself, who could out-throw any boy in town, and roll up a bigger block to the new snow fort they were building than any three boys among them. And how the parson enjoyed being a boy again! How exhilarating the slide down the steep hill; how invigorating the pure, cool air; how pleasant the noise of the chatting and joking going on around him; how bright and sweet the boys and girls looked, with their rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes; how the old parson’s heart thrilled as they crowded around him when he would go, and urged him to stay; and how little Alice Dorchester begged him, with her little arms around his neck, to “jes stay and gib me one more slide.”

“You never made such a pastoral call as that, parson,” said the deacon, as they drove away amid the cheers of the boys and the good-byes of the girls, while the former fired off a volley of snowballs in his honor and the latter waved their muffs and handkerchiefs after them.

“God bless them! God bless them!” said the parson. “They have lifted a great load from my heart and taught me the sweetness of life, of youth and the wisdom of Him who took the little ones in His arms and blessed them. Ah, deacon,” he added, “I’ve been a great fool, but I’ll be so, thank God, no more.”

III

Now, old Jack was a horse of a great deal of character, and had a great history, but of this none in that section, save the little deacon, knew a word. Dick Tubman, the deacon’s youngest, wildest, and, I might add, favorite son, had purchased him of an impecunious jockey at the close of a, to him, disastrous campaign, that cleaned him completely out and left him in a strange city, a thousand miles from home, with nothing but the horse, harness and sulky, and a list of unpaid bills that must be met before he could leave the scene of his disastrous fortunes. Under such circumstances it was that Dick Tubman ran across the horse and, partly out of pity for its owner and partly out of admiration of the horse, whose failure to win at the races was due more to his lack of condition and the bad management of his jockey than lack of speed, bought him off-hand and, having no use for him himself, shipped him as a present to the deacon, with whom he had now been for four years, with no harder work than plowing out the good old man’s corn in the summer, and jogging along the country roads on the deacon’s errands. Having said this much of the horse, perhaps I should more particularly describe him.

He was, in sooth, an animal of most unique and extraordinary appearance. For, in the first place, he was quite seventeen hands in height and long in proportion. He was also the reverse of shapely in the fashion of his build, for his head was long and bony and his hip bones sharp and protuberant; his tail was what is known among horsemen as a “rat tail,” being but scantily covered with hair, and his neck was even more scantily supplied with a mane; while in color he could easily have taken any premium put up for homeliness, being an ashen roan, mottled with black and patches of divers hue. But his legs were flat and corded like a racer’s, his neck long and thin as a thoroughbred’s, his nostrils large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around his eyes hinted at a cross, somewhere in his pedigree, with Arabian blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was as he drew the deacon and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose, shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar that the smart village chaps, riding along in their jaunty turn-outs, used to chaff the good deacon on the character of the steed, and satirically challenge him to a brush. The deacon always took the badinage in good part, although he inwardly said, more than once, “If I ever get a good chance, when there ain’t too many around, I’ll go up to the turn of the road beyond the church and let Jack out on them;” for Dick had given him a hint of the horse’s history, and told him “he could knock the spots out of thirty,” and wickedly urged the deacon to take the shine out of them airy chaps some of these days.