Railsford long remembered the picture which this youthful hero presented; with his face flushed, his head bare, his sandy hair waving in the breeze, his body laid back at an obtuse angle, as he tugged with both hands at the reins.

The cab behind came on apace, its jaunty Jehu flourishing his whip and shouting loudly to his opponent to keep his right side.

The crowd forgot everything else, and flocked across the grass with loud cheers for the champions.
"Wire in, hansom," shouted some.
"Stick to it, Dig," cried others.
How the mad career might have ended no one could tell; but at each corner the cab closed in ominously with its clumsy competitor, whose horses were fast getting beyond the control of their driver, while the vehicle they were dragging rocked and yawed behind them like a tug in a gale.

Railsford was meditating a descent on to the scene, with a view to prevent a catastrophe, if possible, when a shout of laughter greeted the appearance on the scene of the lawful master of the omnibus, in headlong pursuit of his property.

By an adroit cut across the grass this outraged gentleman succeeded in overtaking the vehicle and boarding it by the step behind; and then, amid delighted shouts of "Whip behind, Dig!" the spectators watched the owner skip up the steps and along the top, just as "Dig," having received timely warning of his peril, dropped the reins and skipped the contrary way along the top and down the back stairs, depositing himself neatly on _terra firma_, where, with admirable _sang-froid_, he joined the spectators and triumphed in the final pulling up of the omnibus, and the consequent abandonment of the race by the indignant hero of the hansom cab, who protested in mock heroics that he was winning hand over hand, and would have licked the 'bus to fits if Dig hadn't funked it.
In the altercation which ensued the company generally took no part, and returned, braced up and fortified by their few minutes' sport, to the serious business of identifying and extricating their luggage from the general _melee_, and conveying themselves and their belongings into winter quarters.
The new master was impressed by what he had seen--not altogether unfavourably.