8 RACEALONG 



the paddock. Gradually the rate of speed increased 

 until he was trotting at top speed with his mane 

 waving and tail floating like a flag behind him. 



With the perfect gate that carried him faster than 

 any other trotter had ever shown in harness the big 

 gelding whirled around the paddock. As there was 

 no hand to restrain him or driver to say whoa he 

 continued until he felt that he had enough of that 

 sort of thing for one day. Stopping he put his head 

 over the fence toward a paddock where Guy McKin- 

 ney was grazing and blew out like a locomotive under 

 full steam standing at a station. There Peter Man- 

 ning, stood bare-footed and as free from restraint as 

 when he followed his dam in W. M. Wright's pas- 

 ture at Libertyville, 111., in 1916. 



This was followed by a few cat jumps like a boy 

 at play. Finally Peter started off to graze, stopping 

 from time to time to snap up his head as if he were 

 looking for a starter to give him the word, and 

 whinnied to all creation trumpeting the fact that he 

 was free. 



Within an hour Peter Manning discarded this 

 diversion. After he had eaten all of the grass he 

 wanted and had a drink from a pail with his name 

 and record of 1 :56% painted on it the champion trot- 

 ter stood in a corner of the paddock where he kept 

 the flies on the wing by switching his tail and stamp- 

 ing his feet. By that time liberty was an every day 

 affair. 



Later while cruising about the large paddock Peter 

 Manning found a depression in which there was a 

 puddle of water from rain that had fallen the pre- 



