I just winds him up once with a bit o' corn and a drink o' water, starts him, and there's his old legs go tick-tack, tick-tack, and his head swinging like a pendulow.

Use 'is secon' natur', and all I've got to do is to tie up the reins to the fore ladder and go to sleep if I like, for he knows his way as well as a Christian.

'Leven o'clock I starts; four o'clock he gets to the market; and if it wasn't for thieves, and some one to look after the baskets, that old hoss could go and do the marketing all hisself." It was all wonderfully fresh and enjoyable to me, that ride along the quiet country road, with another market cart jolting on about a hundred yards ahead, and another one as far behind, while no doubt there were plenty more, but they did not get any closer together, and no one seemed to hurry or trouble in the least.
We trudged on together for some distance, and then Ike made a couple of seats for us under the ladder by folding up sacks, on one of which I sat, on the other he.

Very uncomfortable seats I should call them now; most enjoyable I thought them then, and with no other drawback than a switch now and then from the horse's long tail, an attention perfectly unnecessary, for at that time of night there were no flies.
There was not much to see but hedgerows and houses and fields as we jolted slowly on.

Once we met what Ike called the "padrole," and the mounted policeman, in his long cloak and with the scabbard of his sabre peeping from beneath, looked to me a very formidable personage; but he was not too important to wish Ike a friendly good-night.
We had passed the horse-patrol about a quarter of a mile, when all at once we heard some one singing, or rather howling: "I've been to Paris and I've been to Dover." This was repeated over and over again, and seemed as we sat there under our basket canopy to come from some one driving behind us; but the jolting of the cart and the grinding of wheels and the horse's trampling drowned the sound of the following vehicle, and there it went on: "I've been to Paris and I've been to Dover." But the singer pronounced it _Do-ho-ver_; and then it went on over and over again.
"Yes," said Ike, as if he had been talking about something; "them padroles put a stop to that game." "What game ?" I said.
"Highwaymen's.