flight thereafter with his shirt-tail bound round his forearm.
The leading rush struck the wing, and the jar of posts sent Jimmie’s heart to his throat. The boys fastened on the sweating flanks as flies fasten; relentless, unafraid; giving no inch when a piker turned at charge, or a silly weaner dodged between a hack’s forelegs. And above the wild talk and the hoof-beats and the snarl of unresting whips, Ted Douglas held sway yet: assigning place by the crook of his arm; hustling, steadying, leading a rush; telling a man off to ring in an outcast, and drawing tighter the unbroken rope that was vivid, alert, eager life. Steve had said once that Ted Douglas was made up of nerves and that each nerve had a separate eye, and Tod answered, smarting under deserved chastisement:
“Bedad; some of thim nerves have quare ould muscles to them, thin.”
Scannell saw his head-man’s face just once, as the bay mare shot past with Ted stooped over the wither and the threat of his long whip slung out. And it startled him for the pain that under-lay the work-look. Each man who engages to rule over men takes more than their bodies under his power. By the strength of the personality which makes the ruler, his men grow to dress their consciences by him, and their ideals, and many things that go to make up their manhood. Ted Douglas had learned
