The Hundredth Man Author:Frank R. Stockton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HE village of Cherry Bridge was little more than a hamlet, lying on the banks of Cherry Creek, which came down from the mountains some five o... more »r six miles behind the village, and twisted itself, often very picturesquely, between the hills and through the woodlands of the lower country. Three miles from the village, between the creek and the mountain, lay the farm of Enoch Bullripple; and about four o'clock on the afternoon of a June day, Mr. Horace Stratford stood on the farm-house porch, with Mrs. People, Enoch's sister, by his side. He had arrived at the place the day before, and was now going out for his first drive. His horse, a large, well-formed chestnut, with good roadster blood in him, stood near the porch, harnessed to a comfortable vehicle for two persons. This was, apparently, an ordinary buggy, but had been constructed, with a number of improvements of Mr. Stratford's own designing, for use on the diversified surface of the country about Cherry Bridge. The equipage had been sent from the city a day or two before, but this was the first time Mrs. People had seen it in its entirety, and she gazed at it with much interest. Mrs. People was a pleasant-faced personage of about forty-five, whose growth had seemed to incline rather more towards circumference than altitude. She was dressed neatly, but with adecidedleaning towards ease in the arrangement of her garments. " That's a better horse than you had last year, Mr. Stratford," she said; " and I expect you'll get tired of a day's driving as soon as he does. He stands well without hitchin' too; but you'd better take a tie-strap along with you to-day, for Mrs. Justin has got one of them little dust-brush dogs that seems to have been born with a spite against horses. She brought him from town with her,...« less