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I told them that I had a wife and one child; that I had two good wagons, one a heavy one-horse wagon, with thills, and that I had a large mare which was equal to a common span; that the mare and wagon would do me. I wanted some bedding and our clothing, and some other traps of little value. I had a good milk cow that I wished to give to a friend who had lost all his cattle.
Cutting loose the thill-horse was more difficult, as its body was completely submerged and it was hard to get at the rawhide fastening that held the collar, the wooden arch, and the thills together, but our plucky driver succeeded at last, and we dragged the half-frozen animal out. Rescue came for him, however, too late.
Once we stopped at the lower end of the field to get a drink from a jug of water set in the shade of a fence corner, and once we set the horse in the thills and moved the seed farther up the field.
Of the latter, there are the cutter, with thills so arranged as to permit the horse to travel in the side track; the pung, or tow-pung which is driven with a pole; and the gumper, a rude construction used for temporary purposes in the new countries.
We see long, slender carts in the street, with one horse hitched far ahead with rope traces, and no thills or pole. The women-nearly every one we saw-wear long cloaks of black cloth with a silk hood thrown back. Bruges is famous of old for its beautiful women, who are enticingly described as always walking the streets with covered faces, and peeping out from their mantles.
"D'ye s'pose we'd hang out here over the bottomless pit for any such trifle as that? We want to save the gal." Before Cronk had ended his characteristic speech, Dennis was half-way up the ladder. He entered the second story, only to be driven back by fire and smoke. "A pole of some kind!" he cried. The thills of a broken-down buggy supplied this, but the flames had already reached Miss Brown.
Uncle Eb took it to the tool shop in the stable and put it in shipshape order and made a little pair of thills to go in place of the tongue. Then he made a big flat collar and a back-pad out of the leather in old boot-legs, and rigged a pair of tugs out of two pieces of rope. Old Fred was quite cast down when he stood in harness between the shafts.
Wild filly from the mountain-side, Doomed to the close and chafing thills, Lend me thy long, untiring stride To seek with thee thy western hills! I hear the whispering voice of Spring, The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry, Like some poor bird with prisoned wing That sits and sings, but longs to fly.
Upon this vehicle were piled, Heaven knows how, behind, before, on the thills, and underneath the high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as many as eighteen people, men, women, and children, all in flaunting rags, with a colored scarf here and there, or a gay petticoat, or a scarlet cap, perhaps a priest, with broad black hat, in the center, driving along like a comet, the poor horse in a gallop, the bells on his ornamented saddle merrily jingling, and the whole load in a roar of merriment.
The felloes were made six inches thick, and were strongly doweled together with seasoned hardwood pins; the linch pin was of hickory or ash; the thills were wood; in fact all of it was wood.
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