Black Beauty

Part I

01 My Ear­ly Home

The first place that I can well re­mem­ber was a large pleas­ant mead­ow with a pond of clear wa­ter in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rush­es and wa­ter-​lilies grew at the deep end. Over the hedge on one side we looked in­to a plowed field, and on the oth­er we looked over a gate at our mas­ter’s house, which stood by the road­side; at the top of the mead­ow was a grove of fir trees, and at the bot­tom a run­ning brook over­hung by a steep bank.

While I was young I lived up­on my moth­er’s milk, as I could not eat grass. In the day­time I ran by her side, and at night I lay down close by her. When it was hot we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold we had a nice warm shed near the grove.

As soon as I was old enough to eat grass my moth­er used to go out to work in the day­time, and come back in the evening.

There were six young colts in the mead­ow be­sides me; they were old­er than I was; some were near­ly as large as grown-​up hors­es. I used to run with them, and had great fun; we used to gal­lop all to­geth­er round and round the field as hard as we could go. Some­times we had rather rough play, for they would fre­quent­ly bite and kick as well as gal­lop.

One day, when there was a good deal of kick­ing, my moth­er whin­nied to me to come to her, and then she said:

“I wish you to pay at­ten­tion to what I am go­ing to say to you. The colts who live here are very good colts, but they are cart-​horse colts, and of course they have not learned man­ners. You have been well-​bred and well-​born; your fa­ther has a great name in these parts, and your grand­fa­ther won the cup two years at the New­mar­ket races; your grand­moth­er had the sweet­est tem­per of any horse I ev­er knew, and I think you have nev­er seen me kick or bite. I hope you will grow up gen­tle and good, and nev­er learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and nev­er bite or kick even in play.”

I have nev­er for­got­ten my moth­er’s ad­vice; I knew she was a wise old horse, and our mas­ter thought a great deal of her. Her name was Duchess, but he of­ten called her Pet.

Our mas­ter was a good, kind man. He gave us good food, good lodg­ing, and kind words; he spoke as kind­ly to us as he did to his lit­tle chil­dren. We were all fond of him, and my moth­er loved him very much. When she saw him at the gate she would neigh with joy, and trot up to him. He would pat and stroke her and say, “Well, old Pet, and how is your lit­tle Dark­ie?” I was a dull black, so he called me Dark­ie; then he would give me a piece of bread, which was very good, and some­times he brought a car­rot for my moth­er. All the hors­es would come to him, but I think we were his fa­vorites. My moth­er al­ways took him to the town on a mar­ket day in a light gig.

There was a plow­boy, Dick, who some­times came in­to our field to pluck black­ber­ries from the hedge. When he had eat­en all he want­ed he would have what he called fun with the colts, throw­ing stones and sticks at them to make them gal­lop. We did not much mind him, for we could gal­lop off; but some­times a stone would hit and hurt us.

One day he was at this game, and did not know that the mas­ter was in the next field; but he was there, watch­ing what was go­ing on; over the hedge he jumped in a snap, and catch­ing Dick by the arm, he gave him such a box on the ear as made him roar with the pain and sur­prise. As soon as we saw the mas­ter we trot­ted up near­er to see what went on.

“Bad boy!” he said, “bad boy! to chase the colts. This is not the first time, nor the sec­ond, but it shall be the last. There — take your mon­ey and go home; I shall not want you on my farm again.” So we nev­er saw Dick any more. Old Daniel, the man who looked af­ter the hors­es, was just as gen­tle as our mas­ter, so we were well off.

02 The Hunt

Be­fore I was two years old a cir­cum­stance hap­pened which I have nev­er for­got­ten. It was ear­ly in the spring; there had been a lit­tle frost in the night, and a light mist still hung over the woods and mead­ows. I and the oth­er colts were feed­ing at the low­er part of the field when we heard, quite in the dis­tance, what sound­ed like the cry of dogs. The old­est of the colts raised his head, pricked his ears, and said, “There are the hounds!” and im­me­di­ate­ly can­tered off, fol­lowed by the rest of us to the up­per part of the field, where we could look over the hedge and see sev­er­al fields be­yond. My moth­er and an old rid­ing horse of our mas­ter’s were al­so stand­ing near, and seemed to know all about it.

“They have found a hare,” said my moth­er, “and if they come this way we shall see the hunt.”

And soon the dogs were all tear­ing down the field of young wheat next to ours. I nev­er heard such a noise as they made. They did not bark, nor howl, nor whine, but kept on a “yo! yo, o, o! yo! yo, o, o!” at the top of their voic­es. Af­ter them came a num­ber of men on horse­back, some of them in green coats, all gal­lop­ing as fast as they could. The old horse snort­ed and looked ea­ger­ly af­ter them, and we young colts want­ed to be gal­lop­ing with them, but they were soon away in­to the fields low­er down; here it seemed as if they had come to a stand; the dogs left off bark­ing, and ran about ev­ery way with their noses to the ground.

“They have lost the scent,” said the old horse; “per­haps the hare will get off.”

“What hare?” I said.

“Oh! I don’t know what hare; like­ly enough it may be one of our own hares out of the woods; any hare they can find will do for the dogs and men to run af­ter;” and be­fore long the dogs be­gan their “yo! yo, o, o!” again, and back they came al­to­geth­er at full speed, mak­ing straight for our mead­ow at the part where the high bank and hedge over­hang the brook.

“Now we shall see the hare,” said my moth­er; and just then a hare wild with fright rushed by and made for the woods. On came the dogs; they burst over the bank, leaped the stream, and came dash­ing across the field fol­lowed by the hunts­men. Six or eight men leaped their hors­es clean over, close up­on the dogs. The hare tried to get through the fence; it was too thick, and she turned sharp round to make for the road, but it was too late; the dogs were up­on her with their wild cries; we heard one shriek, and that was the end of her. One of the hunts­men rode up and whipped off the dogs, who would soon have torn her to pieces. He held her up by the leg torn and bleed­ing, and all the gen­tle­men seemed well pleased.

As for me, I was so as­ton­ished that I did not at first see what was go­ing on by the brook; but when I did look there was a sad sight; two fine hors­es were down, one was strug­gling in the stream, and the oth­er was groan­ing on the grass. One of the rid­ers was get­ting out of the wa­ter cov­ered with mud, the oth­er lay quite still.

“His neck is broke,” said my moth­er.

“And serve him right, too,” said one of the colts.

I thought the same, but my moth­er did not join with us.

“Well, no,” she said, “you must not say that; but though I am an old horse, and have seen and heard a great deal, I nev­er yet could make out why men are so fond of this sport; they of­ten hurt them­selves, of­ten spoil good hors­es, and tear up the fields, and all for a hare or a fox, or a stag, that they could get more eas­ily some oth­er way; but we are on­ly hors­es, and don’t know.”

While my moth­er was say­ing this we stood and looked on. Many of the rid­ers had gone to the young man; but my mas­ter, who had been watch­ing what was go­ing on, was the first to raise him. His head fell back and his arms hung down, and ev­ery one looked very se­ri­ous. There was no noise now; even the dogs were qui­et, and seemed to know that some­thing was wrong. They car­ried him to our mas­ter’s house. I heard af­ter­ward that it was young George Gor­don, the squire’s on­ly son, a fine, tall young man, and the pride of his fam­ily.

There was now rid­ing off in all di­rec­tions to the doc­tor’s, to the far­ri­er’s, and no doubt to Squire Gor­don’s, to let him know about his son. When Mr. Bond, the far­ri­er, came to look at the black horse that lay groan­ing on the grass, he felt him all over, and shook his head; one of his legs was bro­ken. Then some one ran to our mas­ter’s house and came back with a gun; present­ly there was a loud bang and a dread­ful shriek, and then all was still; the black horse moved no more.

My moth­er seemed much trou­bled; she said she had known that horse for years, and that his name was “Rob Roy”; he was a good horse, and there was no vice in him. She nev­er would go to that part of the field af­ter­ward.

Not many days af­ter we heard the church-​bell tolling for a long time, and look­ing over the gate we saw a long, strange black coach that was cov­ered with black cloth and was drawn by black hors­es; af­ter that came an­oth­er and an­oth­er and an­oth­er, and all were black, while the bell kept tolling, tolling. They were car­ry­ing young Gor­don to the church­yard to bury him. He would nev­er ride again. What they did with Rob Roy I nev­er knew; but ’twas all for one lit­tle hare.

03 My Break­ing In

I was now be­gin­ning to grow hand­some; my coat had grown fine and soft, and was bright black. I had one white foot and a pret­ty white star on my fore­head. I was thought very hand­some; my mas­ter would not sell me till I was four years old; he said lads ought not to work like men, and colts ought not to work like hors­es till they were quite grown up.

When I was four years old Squire Gor­don came to look at me. He ex­am­ined my eyes, my mouth, and my legs; he felt them all down; and then I had to walk and trot and gal­lop be­fore him. He seemed to like me, and said, “When he has been well bro­ken in he will do very well.” My mas­ter said he would break me in him­self, as he should not like me to be fright­ened or hurt, and he lost no time about it, for the next day he be­gan.

Ev­ery one may not know what break­ing in is, there­fore I will de­scribe it. It means to teach a horse to wear a sad­dle and bri­dle, and to car­ry on his back a man, wom­an or child; to go just the way they wish, and to go qui­et­ly. Be­sides this he has to learn to wear a col­lar, a crup­per, and a breech­ing, and to stand still while they are put on; then to have a cart or a chaise fixed be­hind, so that he can­not walk or trot with­out drag­ging it af­ter him; and he must go fast or slow, just as his driv­er wish­es. He must nev­er start at what he sees, nor speak to oth­er hors­es, nor bite, nor kick, nor have any will of his own; but al­ways do his mas­ter’s will, even though he may be very tired or hun­gry; but the worst of all is, when his har­ness is once on, he may nei­ther jump for joy nor lie down for weari­ness. So you see this break­ing in is a great thing.

I had of course long been used to a hal­ter and a head­stall, and to be led about in the fields and lanes qui­et­ly, but now I was to have a bit and bri­dle; my mas­ter gave me some oats as usu­al, and af­ter a good deal of coax­ing he got the bit in­to my mouth, and the bri­dle fixed, but it was a nasty thing! Those who have nev­er had a bit in their mouths can­not think how bad it feels; a great piece of cold hard steel as thick as a man’s fin­ger to be pushed in­to one’s mouth, be­tween one’s teeth, and over one’s tongue, with the ends com­ing out at the cor­ner of your mouth, and held fast there by straps over your head, un­der your throat, round your nose, and un­der your chin; so that no way in the world can you get rid of the nasty hard thing; it is very bad! yes, very bad! at least I thought so; but I knew my moth­er al­ways wore one when she went out, and all hors­es did when they were grown up; and so, what with the nice oats, and what with my mas­ter’s pats, kind words, and gen­tle ways, I got to wear my bit and bri­dle.

Next came the sad­dle, but that was not half so bad; my mas­ter put it on my back very gen­tly, while old Daniel held my head; he then made the girths fast un­der my body, pat­ting and talk­ing to me all the time; then I had a few oats, then a lit­tle lead­ing about; and this he did ev­ery day till I be­gan to look for the oats and the sad­dle. At length, one morn­ing, my mas­ter got on my back and rode me round the mead­ow on the soft grass. It cer­tain­ly did feel queer; but I must say I felt rather proud to car­ry my mas­ter, and as he con­tin­ued to ride me a lit­tle ev­ery day I soon be­came ac­cus­tomed to it.

The next un­pleas­ant busi­ness was putting on the iron shoes; that too was very hard at first. My mas­ter went with me to the smith’s forge, to see that I was not hurt or got any fright. The black­smith took my feet in his hand, one af­ter the oth­er, and cut away some of the hoof. It did not pain me, so I stood still on three legs till he had done them all. Then he took a piece of iron the shape of my foot, and clapped it on, and drove some nails through the shoe quite in­to my hoof, so that the shoe was firm­ly on. My feet felt very stiff and heavy, but in time I got used to it.

And now hav­ing got so far, my mas­ter went on to break me to har­ness; there were more new things to wear. First, a stiff heavy col­lar just on my neck, and a bri­dle with great side-​pieces against my eyes called blink­ers, and blink­ers in­deed they were, for I could not see on ei­ther side, but on­ly straight in front of me; next, there was a small sad­dle with a nasty stiff strap that went right un­der my tail; that was the crup­per. I hat­ed the crup­per; to have my long tail dou­bled up and poked through that strap was al­most as bad as the bit. I nev­er felt more like kick­ing, but of course I could not kick such a good mas­ter, and so in time I got used to ev­ery­thing, and could do my work as well as my moth­er.

I must not for­get to men­tion one part of my train­ing, which I have al­ways con­sid­ered a very great ad­van­tage. My mas­ter sent me for a fort­night to a neigh­bor­ing farmer’s, who had a mead­ow which was skirt­ed on one side by the rail­way. Here were some sheep and cows, and I was turned in among them.

I shall nev­er for­get the first train that ran by. I was feed­ing qui­et­ly near the pales which sep­arat­ed the mead­ow from the rail­way, when I heard a strange sound at a dis­tance, and be­fore I knew whence it came — with a rush and a clat­ter, and a puff­ing out of smoke — a long black train of some­thing flew by, and was gone al­most be­fore I could draw my breath. I turned and gal­loped to the fur­ther side of the mead­ow as fast as I could go, and there I stood snort­ing with as­ton­ish­ment and fear. In the course of the day many oth­er trains went by, some more slow­ly; these drew up at the sta­tion close by, and some­times made an aw­ful shriek and groan be­fore they stopped. I thought it very dread­ful, but the cows went on eat­ing very qui­et­ly, and hard­ly raised their heads as the black fright­ful thing came puff­ing and grind­ing past.

For the first few days I could not feed in peace; but as I found that this ter­ri­ble crea­ture nev­er came in­to the field, or did me any harm, I be­gan to dis­re­gard it, and very soon I cared as lit­tle about the pass­ing of a train as the cows and sheep did.

Since then I have seen many hors­es much alarmed and restive at the sight or sound of a steam en­gine; but thanks to my good mas­ter’s care, I am as fear­less at rail­way sta­tions as in my own sta­ble.

Now if any one wants to break in a young horse well, that is the way.

My mas­ter of­ten drove me in dou­ble har­ness with my moth­er, be­cause she was steady and could teach me how to go bet­ter than a strange horse. She told me the bet­ter I be­haved the bet­ter I should be treat­ed, and that it was wis­est al­ways to do my best to please my mas­ter; “but,” said she, “there are a great many kinds of men; there are good thought­ful men like our mas­ter, that any horse may be proud to serve; and there are bad, cru­el men, who nev­er ought to have a horse or dog to call their own. Be­sides, there are a great many fool­ish men, vain, ig­no­rant, and care­less, who nev­er trou­ble them­selves to think; these spoil more hors­es than all, just for want of sense; they don’t mean it, but they do it for all that. I hope you will fall in­to good hands; but a horse nev­er knows who may buy him, or who may drive him; it is all a chance for us; but still I say, do your best wher­ev­er it is, and keep up your good name.”

04 Birtwick Park

At this time I used to stand in the sta­ble and my coat was brushed ev­ery day till it shone like a rook’s wing. It was ear­ly in May, when there came a man from Squire Gor­don’s, who took me away to the hall. My mas­ter said, “Good-​by, Dark­ie; be a good horse, and al­ways do your best.” I could not say “good-​by”, so I put my nose in­to his hand; he pat­ted me kind­ly, and I left my first home. As I lived some years with Squire Gor­don, I may as well tell some­thing about the place.

Squire Gor­don’s park skirt­ed the vil­lage of Birtwick. It was en­tered by a large iron gate, at which stood the first lodge, and then you trot­ted along on a smooth road be­tween clumps of large old trees; then an­oth­er lodge and an­oth­er gate, which brought you to the house and the gar­dens. Be­yond this lay the home pad­dock, the old or­chard, and the sta­bles. There was ac­com­mo­da­tion for many hors­es and car­riages; but I need on­ly de­scribe the sta­ble in­to which I was tak­en; this was very roomy, with four good stalls; a large swing­ing win­dow opened in­to the yard, which made it pleas­ant and airy.

The first stall was a large square one, shut in be­hind with a wood­en gate; the oth­ers were com­mon stalls, good stalls, but not near­ly so large; it had a low rack for hay and a low manger for corn; it was called a loose box, be­cause the horse that was put in­to it was not tied up, but left loose, to do as he liked. It is a great thing to have a loose box.

In­to this fine box the groom put me; it was clean, sweet, and airy. I nev­er was in a bet­ter box than that, and the sides were not so high but that I could see all that went on through the iron rails that were at the top.

He gave me some very nice oats, he pat­ted me, spoke kind­ly, and then went away.

When I had eat­en my corn I looked round. In the stall next to mine stood a lit­tle fat gray pony, with a thick mane and tail, a very pret­ty head, and a pert lit­tle nose.

I put my head up to the iron rails at the top of my box, and said, “How do you do? What is your name?”

He turned round as far as his hal­ter would al­low, held up his head, and said, “My name is Mer­rylegs. I am very hand­some; I car­ry the young ladies on my back, and some­times I take our mis­tress out in the low chair. They think a great deal of me, and so does James. Are you go­ing to live next door to me in the box?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Well, then,” he said, “I hope you are good-​tem­pered; I do not like any one next door who bites.”

Just then a horse’s head looked over from the stall be­yond; the ears were laid back, and the eye looked rather ill-​tem­pered. This was a tall chest­nut mare, with a long hand­some neck. She looked across to me and said:

“So it is you who have turned me out of my box; it is a very strange thing for a colt like you to come and turn a la­dy out of her own home.”

“I beg your par­don,” I said, “I have turned no one out; the man who brought me put me here, and I had noth­ing to do with it; and as to my be­ing a colt, I am turned four years old and am a grown-​up horse. I nev­er had words yet with horse or mare, and it is my wish to live at peace.”

“Well,” she said, “we shall see. Of course, I do not want to have words with a young thing like you.” I said no more.

In the af­ter­noon, when she went out, Mer­rylegs told me all about it.

“The thing is this,” said Mer­rylegs. “Gin­ger has a bad habit of bit­ing and snap­ping; that is why they call her Gin­ger, and when she was in the loose box she used to snap very much. One day she bit James in the arm and made it bleed, and so Miss Flo­ra and Miss Jessie, who are very fond of me, were afraid to come in­to the sta­ble. They used to bring me nice things to eat, an ap­ple or a car­rot, or a piece of bread, but af­ter Gin­ger stood in that box they dared not come, and I missed them very much. I hope they will now come again, if you do not bite or snap.”

I told him I nev­er bit any­thing but grass, hay, and corn, and could not think what plea­sure Gin­ger found it.

“Well, I don’t think she does find plea­sure,” says Mer­rylegs; “it is just a bad habit; she says no one was ev­er kind to her, and why should she not bite? Of course, it is a very bad habit; but I am sure, if all she says be true, she must have been very ill-​used be­fore she came here. John does all he can to please her, and James does all he can, and our mas­ter nev­er us­es a whip if a horse acts right; so I think she might be good-​tem­pered here. You see,” he said, with a wise look, “I am twelve years old; I know a great deal, and I can tell you there is not a bet­ter place for a horse all round the coun­try than this. John is the best groom that ev­er was; he has been here four­teen years; and you nev­er saw such a kind boy as James is; so that it is all Gin­ger’s own fault that she did not stay in that box.”

05 A Fair Start

The name of the coach­man was John Man­ly; he had a wife and one lit­tle child, and they lived in the coach­man’s cot­tage, very near the sta­bles.

The next morn­ing he took me in­to the yard and gave me a good groom­ing, and just as I was go­ing in­to my box, with my coat soft and bright, the squire came in to look at me, and seemed pleased. “John,” he said, “I meant to have tried the new horse this morn­ing, but I have oth­er busi­ness. You may as well take him around af­ter break­fast; go by the com­mon and the High­wood, and back by the wa­ter­mill and the riv­er; that will show his paces.”

“I will, sir,” said John. Af­ter break­fast he came and fit­ted me with a bri­dle. He was very par­tic­ular in let­ting out and tak­ing in the straps, to fit my head com­fort­ably; then he brought a sad­dle, but it was not broad enough for my back; he saw it in a minute and went for an­oth­er, which fit­ted nice­ly. He rode me first slow­ly, then a trot, then a can­ter, and when we were on the com­mon he gave me a light touch with his whip, and we had a splen­did gal­lop.

“Ho, ho! my boy,” he said, as he pulled me up, “you would like to fol­low the hounds, I think.”

As we came back through the park we met the Squire and Mrs. Gor­don walk­ing; they stopped, and John jumped off.

“Well, John, how does he go?”

“First-​rate, sir,” an­swered John; “he is as fleet as a deer, and has a fine spir­it too; but the light­est touch of the rein will guide him. Down at the end of the com­mon we met one of those trav­el­ing carts hung all over with bas­kets, rugs, and such like; you know, sir, many hors­es will not pass those carts qui­et­ly; he just took a good look at it, and then went on as qui­et and pleas­ant as could be. They were shoot­ing rab­bits near the High­wood, and a gun went off close by; he pulled up a lit­tle and looked, but did not stir a step to right or left. I just held the rein steady and did not hur­ry him, and it’s my opin­ion he has not been fright­ened or ill-​used while he was young.”

“That’s well,” said the squire, “I will try him my­self to-​mor­row.”

The next day I was brought up for my mas­ter. I re­mem­bered my moth­er’s coun­sel and my good old mas­ter’s, and I tried to do ex­act­ly what he want­ed me to do. I found he was a very good rid­er, and thought­ful for his horse too. When he came home the la­dy was at the hall door as he rode up.

“Well, my dear,” she said, “how do you like him?”

“He is ex­act­ly what John said,” he replied; “a pleas­an­ter crea­ture I nev­er wish to mount. What shall we call him?”

“Would you like Ebony?” said she; “he is as black as ebony.”

“No, not Ebony.”

“Will you call him Black­bird, like your un­cle’s old horse?”

“No, he is far hand­somer than old Black­bird ev­er was.”

“Yes,” she said, “he is re­al­ly quite a beau­ty, and he has such a sweet, good-​tem­pered face, and such a fine, in­tel­li­gent eye — what do you say to call­ing him Black Beau­ty?”

“Black Beau­ty — why, yes, I think that is a very good name. If you like it shall be his name;” and so it was.

When John went in­to the sta­ble he told James that mas­ter and mis­tress had cho­sen a good, sen­si­ble En­glish name for me, that meant some­thing; not like Maren­go, or Pe­ga­sus, or Ab­dal­lah. They both laughed, and James said, “If it was not for bring­ing back the past, I should have named him Rob Roy, for I nev­er saw two hors­es more alike.”

“That’s no won­der,” said John; “didn’t you know that Farmer Grey’s old Duchess was the moth­er of them both?”

I had nev­er heard that be­fore; and so poor Rob Roy who was killed at that hunt was my broth­er! I did not won­der that my moth­er was so trou­bled. It seems that hors­es have no re­la­tions; at least they nev­er know each oth­er af­ter they are sold.

John seemed very proud of me; he used to make my mane and tail al­most as smooth as a la­dy’s hair, and he would talk to me a great deal; of course I did not un­der­stand all he said, but I learned more and more to know what he meant, and what he want­ed me to do. I grew very fond of him, he was so gen­tle and kind; he seemed to know just how a horse feels, and when he cleaned me he knew the ten­der places and the tick­lish places; when he brushed my head he went as care­ful­ly over my eyes as if they were his own, and nev­er stirred up any ill-​tem­per.

James Howard, the sta­ble boy, was just as gen­tle and pleas­ant in his way, so I thought my­self well off. There was an­oth­er man who helped in the yard, but he had very lit­tle to do with Gin­ger and me.

A few days af­ter this I had to go out with Gin­ger in the car­riage. I won­dered how we should get on to­geth­er; but ex­cept lay­ing her ears back when I was led up to her, she be­haved very well. She did her work hon­est­ly, and did her full share, and I nev­er wish to have a bet­ter part­ner in dou­ble har­ness. When we came to a hill, in­stead of slack­en­ing her pace, she would throw her weight right in­to the col­lar, and pull away straight up. We had both the same sort of courage at our work, and John had of­ten­er to hold us in than to urge us for­ward; he nev­er had to use the whip with ei­ther of us; then our paces were much the same, and I found it very easy to keep step with her when trot­ting, which made it pleas­ant, and mas­ter al­ways liked it when we kept step well, and so did John. Af­ter we had been out two or three times to­geth­er we grew quite friend­ly and so­cia­ble, which made me feel very much at home.

As for Mer­rylegs, he and I soon be­came great friends; he was such a cheer­ful, plucky, good-​tem­pered lit­tle fel­low that he was a fa­vorite with ev­ery one, and es­pe­cial­ly with Miss Jessie and Flo­ra, who used to ride him about in the or­chard, and have fine games with him and their lit­tle dog Frisky.

Our mas­ter had two oth­er hors­es that stood in an­oth­er sta­ble. One was Jus­tice, a roan cob, used for rid­ing or for the lug­gage cart; the oth­er was an old brown hunter, named Sir Oliv­er; he was past work now, but was a great fa­vorite with the mas­ter, who gave him the run of the park; he some­times did a lit­tle light cart­ing on the es­tate, or car­ried one of the young ladies when they rode out with their fa­ther, for he was very gen­tle and could be trust­ed with a child as well as Mer­rylegs. The cob was a strong, well-​made, good-​tem­pered horse, and we some­times had a lit­tle chat in the pad­dock, but of course I could not be so in­ti­mate with him as with Gin­ger, who stood in the same sta­ble.

06 Lib­er­ty

I was quite hap­py in my new place, and if there was one thing that I missed it must not be thought I was dis­con­tent­ed; all who had to do with me were good and I had a light airy sta­ble and the best of food. What more could I want? Why, lib­er­ty! For three years and a half of my life I had had all the lib­er­ty I could wish for; but now, week af­ter week, month af­ter month, and no doubt year af­ter year, I must stand up in a sta­ble night and day ex­cept when I am want­ed, and then I must be just as steady and qui­et as any old horse who has worked twen­ty years. Straps here and straps there, a bit in my mouth, and blink­ers over my eyes. Now, I am not com­plain­ing, for I know it must be so. I on­ly mean to say that for a young horse full of strength and spir­its, who has been used to some large field or plain where he can fling up his head and toss up his tail and gal­lop away at full speed, then round and back again with a snort to his com­pan­ions — I say it is hard nev­er to have a bit more lib­er­ty to do as you like. Some­times, when I have had less ex­er­cise than usu­al, I have felt so full of life and spring that when John has tak­en me out to ex­er­cise I re­al­ly could not keep qui­et; do what I would, it seemed as if I must jump, or dance, or prance, and many a good shake I know I must have giv­en him, es­pe­cial­ly at the first; but he was al­ways good and pa­tient.

“Steady, steady, my boy,” he would say; “wait a bit, and we will have a good swing, and soon get the tick­le out of your feet.” Then as soon as we were out of the vil­lage, he would give me a few miles at a spank­ing trot, and then bring me back as fresh as be­fore, on­ly clear of the fid­gets, as he called them. Spir­it­ed hors­es, when not enough ex­er­cised, are of­ten called skit­tish, when it is on­ly play; and some grooms will pun­ish them, but our John did not; he knew it was on­ly high spir­its. Still, he had his own ways of mak­ing me un­der­stand by the tone of his voice or the touch of the rein. If he was very se­ri­ous and quite de­ter­mined, I al­ways knew it by his voice, and that had more pow­er with me than any­thing else, for I was very fond of him.

I ought to say that some­times we had our lib­er­ty for a few hours; this used to be on fine Sun­days in the sum­mer-​time. The car­riage nev­er went out on Sun­days, be­cause the church was not far off.

It was a great treat to us to be turned out in­to the home pad­dock or the old or­chard; the grass was so cool and soft to our feet, the air so sweet, and the free­dom to do as we liked was so pleas­ant — to gal­lop, to lie down, and roll over on our backs, or to nib­ble the sweet grass. Then it was a very good time for talk­ing, as we stood to­geth­er un­der the shade of the large chest­nut tree.

07 Gin­ger

One day when Gin­ger and I were stand­ing alone in the shade, we had a great deal of talk; she want­ed to know all about my bring­ing up and break­ing in, and I told her.

“Well,” said she, “if I had had your bring­ing up I might have had as good a tem­per as you, but now I don’t be­lieve I ev­er shall.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Be­cause it has been all so dif­fer­ent with me,” she replied. “I nev­er had any one, horse or man, that was kind to me, or that I cared to please, for in the first place I was tak­en from my moth­er as soon as I was weaned, and put with a lot of oth­er young colts; none of them cared for me, and I cared for none of them. There was no kind mas­ter like yours to look af­ter me, and talk to me, and bring me nice things to eat. The man that had the care of us nev­er gave me a kind word in my life. I do not mean that he ill-​used me, but he did not care for us one bit fur­ther than to see that we had plen­ty to eat, and shel­ter in the win­ter. A foot­path ran through our field, and very of­ten the great boys pass­ing through would fling stones to make us gal­lop. I was nev­er hit, but one fine young colt was bad­ly cut in the face, and I should think it would be a scar for life. We did not care for them, but of course it made us more wild, and we set­tled it in our minds that boys were our en­emies. We had very good fun in the free mead­ows, gal­lop­ing up and down and chas­ing each oth­er round and round the field; then stand­ing still un­der the shade of the trees. But when it came to break­ing in, that was a bad time for me; sev­er­al men came to catch me, and when at last they closed me in at one cor­ner of the field, one caught me by the fore­lock, an­oth­er caught me by the nose and held it so tight I could hard­ly draw my breath; then an­oth­er took my un­der jaw in his hard hand and wrenched my mouth open, and so by force they got on the hal­ter and the bar in­to my mouth; then one dragged me along by the hal­ter, an­oth­er flog­ging be­hind, and this was the first ex­pe­ri­ence I had of men’s kind­ness; it was all force. They did not give me a chance to know what they want­ed. I was high bred and had a great deal of spir­it, and was very wild, no doubt, and gave them, I dare say, plen­ty of trou­ble, but then it was dread­ful to be shut up in a stall day af­ter day in­stead of hav­ing my lib­er­ty, and I fret­ted and pined and want­ed to get loose. You know your­self it’s bad enough when you have a kind mas­ter and plen­ty of coax­ing, but there was noth­ing of that sort for me.

“There was one — the old mas­ter, Mr. Ry­der — who, I think, could soon have brought me round, and could have done any­thing with me; but he had giv­en up all the hard part of the trade to his son and to an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­enced man, and he on­ly came at times to over­see. His son was a strong, tall, bold man; they called him Sam­son, and he used to boast that he had nev­er found a horse that could throw him. There was no gen­tle­ness in him, as there was in his fa­ther, but on­ly hard­ness, a hard voice, a hard eye, a hard hand; and I felt from the first that what he want­ed was to wear all the spir­it out of me, and just make me in­to a qui­et, hum­ble, obe­di­ent piece of horse­flesh. `Horse­flesh’! Yes, that is all that he thought about,” and Gin­ger stamped her foot as if the very thought of him made her an­gry. Then she went on:

“If I did not do ex­act­ly what he want­ed he would get put out, and make me run round with that long rein in the train­ing field till he had tired me out. I think he drank a good deal, and I am quite sure that the of­ten­er he drank the worse it was for me. One day he had worked me hard in ev­ery way he could, and when I lay down I was tired, and mis­er­able, and an­gry; it all seemed so hard. The next morn­ing he came for me ear­ly, and ran me round again for a long time. I had scarce­ly had an hour’s rest, when he came again for me with a sad­dle and bri­dle and a new kind of bit. I could nev­er quite tell how it came about; he had on­ly just mount­ed me on the train­ing ground, when some­thing I did put him out of tem­per, and he chucked me hard with the rein. The new bit was very painful, and I reared up sud­den­ly, which an­gered him still more, and he be­gan to flog me. I felt my whole spir­it set against him, and I be­gan to kick, and plunge, and rear as I had nev­er done be­fore, and we had a reg­ular fight; for a long time he stuck to the sad­dle and pun­ished me cru­el­ly with his whip and spurs, but my blood was thor­ough­ly up, and I cared for noth­ing he could do if on­ly I could get him off. At last af­ter a ter­ri­ble strug­gle I threw him off back­ward. I heard him fall heav­ily on the turf, and with­out look­ing be­hind me, I gal­loped off to the oth­er end of the field; there I turned round and saw my per­se­cu­tor slow­ly ris­ing from the ground and go­ing in­to the sta­ble. I stood un­der an oak tree and watched, but no one came to catch me. The time went on, and the sun was very hot; the flies swarmed round me and set­tled on my bleed­ing flanks where the spurs had dug in. I felt hun­gry, for I had not eat­en since the ear­ly morn­ing, but there was not enough grass in that mead­ow for a goose to live on. I want­ed to lie down and rest, but with the sad­dle strapped tight­ly on there was no com­fort, and there was not a drop of wa­ter to drink. The af­ter­noon wore on, and the sun got low. I saw the oth­er colts led in, and I knew they were hav­ing a good feed.

“At last, just as the sun went down, I saw the old mas­ter come out with a sieve in his hand. He was a very fine old gen­tle­man with quite white hair, but his voice was what I should know him by among a thou­sand. It was not high, nor yet low, but full, and clear, and kind, and when he gave or­ders it was so steady and de­cid­ed that ev­ery one knew, both hors­es and men, that he ex­pect­ed to be obeyed. He came qui­et­ly along, now and then shak­ing the oats about that he had in the sieve, and speak­ing cheer­ful­ly and gen­tly to me: `Come along, lassie, come along, lassie; come along, come along.’ I stood still and let him come up; he held the oats to me, and I be­gan to eat with­out fear; his voice took all my fear away. He stood by, pat­ting and stroking me while I was eat­ing, and see­ing the clots of blood on my side he seemed very vexed. `Poor lassie! it was a bad busi­ness, a bad busi­ness;’ then he qui­et­ly took the rein and led me to the sta­ble; just at the door stood Sam­son. I laid my ears back and snapped at him. `Stand back,’ said the mas­ter, `and keep out of her way; you’ve done a bad day’s work for this fil­ly.’ He growled out some­thing about a vi­cious brute. `Hark ye,’ said the fa­ther, `a bad-​tem­pered man will nev­er make a good-​tem­pered horse. You’ve not learned your trade yet, Sam­son.’ Then he led me in­to my box, took off the sad­dle and bri­dle with his own hands, and tied me up; then he called for a pail of warm wa­ter and a sponge, took off his coat, and while the sta­ble-​man held the pail, he sponged my sides a good while, so ten­der­ly that I was sure he knew how sore and bruised they were. `Whoa! my pret­ty one,’ he said, `stand still, stand still.’ His very voice did me good, and the bathing was very com­fort­able. The skin was so bro­ken at the cor­ners of my mouth that I could not eat the hay, the stalks hurt me. He looked close­ly at it, shook his head, and told the man to fetch a good bran mash and put some meal in­to it. How good that mash was! and so soft and heal­ing to my mouth. He stood by all the time I was eat­ing, stroking me and talk­ing to the man. `If a high-​met­tled crea­ture like this,’ said he, `can’t be bro­ken by fair means, she will nev­er be good for any­thing.’

“Af­ter that he of­ten came to see me, and when my mouth was healed the oth­er break­er, Job, they called him, went on train­ing me; he was steady and thought­ful, and I soon learned what he want­ed.”

08 Gin­ger’s Sto­ry Con­tin­ued

The next time that Gin­ger and I were to­geth­er in the pad­dock she told me about her first place.

“Af­ter my break­ing in,” she said, “I was bought by a deal­er to match an­oth­er chest­nut horse. For some weeks he drove us to­geth­er, and then we were sold to a fash­ion­able gen­tle­man, and were sent up to Lon­don. I had been driv­en with a check-​rein by the deal­er, and I hat­ed it worse than any­thing else; but in this place we were reined far tighter, the coach­man and his mas­ter think­ing we looked more stylish so. We were of­ten driv­en about in the park and oth­er fash­ion­able places. You who nev­er had a check-​rein on don’t know what it is, but I can tell you it is dread­ful.

“I like to toss my head about and hold it as high as any horse; but fan­cy now your­self, if you tossed your head up high and were obliged to hold it there, and that for hours to­geth­er, not able to move it at all, ex­cept with a jerk still high­er, your neck aching till you did not know how to bear it. Be­sides that, to have two bits in­stead of one — and mine was a sharp one, it hurt my tongue and my jaw, and the blood from my tongue col­ored the froth that kept fly­ing from my lips as I chafed and fret­ted at the bits and rein. It was worst when we had to stand by the hour wait­ing for our mis­tress at some grand par­ty or en­ter­tain­ment, and if I fret­ted or stamped with im­pa­tience the whip was laid on. It was enough to drive one mad.”

“Did not your mas­ter take any thought for you?” I said.

“No,” said she, “he on­ly cared to have a stylish turnout, as they call it; I think he knew very lit­tle about hors­es; he left that to his coach­man, who told him I had an ir­ri­ta­ble tem­per! that I had not been well bro­ken to the check-​rein, but I should soon get used to it; but he was not the man to do it, for when I was in the sta­ble, mis­er­able and an­gry, in­stead of be­ing smoothed and qui­et­ed by kind­ness, I got on­ly a surly word or a blow. If he had been civ­il I would have tried to bear it. I was will­ing to work, and ready to work hard too; but to be tor­ment­ed for noth­ing but their fan­cies an­gered me. What right had they to make me suf­fer like that? Be­sides the sore­ness in my mouth, and the pain in my neck, it al­ways made my wind­pipe feel bad, and if I had stopped there long I know it would have spoiled my breath­ing; but I grew more and more rest­less and ir­ri­ta­ble, I could not help it; and I be­gan to snap and kick when any one came to har­ness me; for this the groom beat me, and one day, as they had just buck­led us in­to the car­riage, and were strain­ing my head up with that rein, I be­gan to plunge and kick with all my might. I soon broke a lot of har­ness, and kicked my­self clear; so that was an end of that place.

“Af­ter this I was sent to Tat­ter­sall’s to be sold; of course I could not be war­rant­ed free from vice, so noth­ing was said about that. My hand­some ap­pear­ance and good paces soon brought a gen­tle­man to bid for me, and I was bought by an­oth­er deal­er; he tried me in all kinds of ways and with dif­fer­ent bits, and he soon found out what I could not bear. At last he drove me quite with­out a check-​rein, and then sold me as a per­fect­ly qui­et horse to a gen­tle­man in the coun­try; he was a good mas­ter, and I was get­ting on very well, but his old groom left him and a new one came. This man was as hard-​tem­pered and hard-​hand­ed as Sam­son; he al­ways spoke in a rough, im­pa­tient voice, and if I did not move in the stall the mo­ment he want­ed me, he would hit me above the hocks with his sta­ble broom or the fork, whichev­er he might have in his hand. Ev­ery­thing he did was rough, and I be­gan to hate him; he want­ed to make me afraid of him, but I was too high-​met­tled for that, and one day when he had ag­gra­vat­ed me more than usu­al I bit him, which of course put him in a great rage, and he be­gan to hit me about the head with a rid­ing whip. Af­ter that he nev­er dared to come in­to my stall again; ei­ther my heels or my teeth were ready for him, and he knew it. I was quite qui­et with my mas­ter, but of course he lis­tened to what the man said, and so I was sold again.

“The same deal­er heard of me, and said he thought he knew one place where I should do well. `’Twas a pity,’ he said, `that such a fine horse should go to the bad, for want of a re­al good chance,’ and the end of it was that I came here not long be­fore you did; but I had then made up my mind that men were my nat­ural en­emies and that I must de­fend my­self. Of course it is very dif­fer­ent here, but who knows how long it will last? I wish I could think about things as you do; but I can’t, af­ter all I have gone through.”

“Well,” I said, “I think it would be a re­al shame if you were to bite or kick John or James.”

“I don’t mean to,” she said, “while they are good to me. I did bite James once pret­ty sharp, but John said, `Try her with kind­ness,’ and in­stead of pun­ish­ing me as I ex­pect­ed, James came to me with his arm bound up, and brought me a bran mash and stroked me; and I have nev­er snapped at him since, and I won’t ei­ther.”

I was sor­ry for Gin­ger, but of course I knew very lit­tle then, and I thought most like­ly she made the worst of it; how­ev­er, I found that as the weeks went on she grew much more gen­tle and cheer­ful, and had lost the watch­ful, de­fi­ant look that she used to turn on any strange per­son who came near her; and one day James said, “I do be­lieve that mare is get­ting fond of me, she quite whin­nied af­ter me this morn­ing when I had been rub­bing her fore­head.”

“Ay, ay, Jim, ’tis `the Birtwick balls’,” said John, “she’ll be as good as Black Beau­ty by and by; kind­ness is all the physic she wants, poor thing!” Mas­ter no­ticed the change, too, and one day when he got out of the car­riage and came to speak to us, as he of­ten did, he stroked her beau­ti­ful neck. “Well, my pret­ty one, well, how do things go with you now? You are a good bit hap­pi­er than when you came to us, I think.”

She put her nose up to him in a friend­ly, trust­ful way, while he rubbed it gen­tly.

“We shall make a cure of her, John,” he said.

“Yes, sir, she’s won­der­ful­ly im­proved; she’s not the same crea­ture that she was; it’s `the Birtwick balls’, sir,” said John, laugh­ing.

This was a lit­tle joke of John’s; he used to say that a reg­ular course of “the Birtwick horse­balls” would cure al­most any vi­cious horse; these balls, he said, were made up of pa­tience and gen­tle­ness, firm­ness and pet­ting, one pound of each to be mixed up with half a pint of com­mon sense, and giv­en to the horse ev­ery day.

09 Mer­rylegs

Mr. Blome­field, the vicar, had a large fam­ily of boys and girls; some­times they used to come and play with Miss Jessie and Flo­ra. One of the girls was as old as Miss Jessie; two of the boys were old­er, and there were sev­er­al lit­tle ones. When they came there was plen­ty of work for Mer­rylegs, for noth­ing pleased them so much as get­ting on him by turns and rid­ing him all about the or­chard and the home pad­dock, and this they would do by the hour to­geth­er.

One af­ter­noon he had been out with them a long time, and when James brought him in and put on his hal­ter he said:

“There, you rogue, mind how you be­have your­self, or we shall get in­to trou­ble.”

“What have you been do­ing, Mer­rylegs?” I asked.

“Oh!” said he, toss­ing his lit­tle head, “I have on­ly been giv­ing those young peo­ple a les­son; they did not know when they had had enough, nor when I had had enough, so I just pitched them off back­ward; that was the on­ly thing they could un­der­stand.”

“What!” said I, “you threw the chil­dren off? I thought you did know bet­ter than that! Did you throw Miss Jessie or Miss Flo­ra?”

He looked very much of­fend­ed, and said:

“Of course not; I would not do such a thing for the best oats that ev­er came in­to the sta­ble; why, I am as care­ful of our young ladies as the mas­ter could be, and as for the lit­tle ones it is I who teach them to ride. When they seem fright­ened or a lit­tle un­steady on my back I go as smooth and as qui­et as old pussy when she is af­ter a bird; and when they are all right I go on again faster, you see, just to use them to it; so don’t you trou­ble your­self preach­ing to me; I am the best friend and the best rid­ing-​mas­ter those chil­dren have. It is not them, it is the boys; boys,” said he, shak­ing his mane, “are quite dif­fer­ent; they must be bro­ken in as we were bro­ken in when we were colts, and just be taught what’s what. The oth­er chil­dren had rid­den me about for near­ly two hours, and then the boys thought it was their turn, and so it was, and I was quite agree­able. They rode me by turns, and I gal­loped them about, up and down the fields and all about the or­chard, for a good hour. They had each cut a great hazel stick for a rid­ing-​whip, and laid it on a lit­tle too hard; but I took it in good part, till at last I thought we had had enough, so I stopped two or three times by way of a hint. Boys, you see, think a horse or pony is like a steam-​en­gine or a thrash­ing-​ma­chine, and can go on as long and as fast as they please; they nev­er think that a pony can get tired, or have any feel­ings; so as the one who was whip­ping me could not un­der­stand I just rose up on my hind legs and let him slip off be­hind — that was all. He mount­ed me again, and I did the same. Then the oth­er boy got up, and as soon as he be­gan to use his stick I laid him on the grass, and so on, till they were able to un­der­stand — that was all. They are not bad boys; they don’t wish to be cru­el. I like them very well; but you see I had to give them a les­son. When they brought me to James and told him I think he was very an­gry to see such big sticks. He said they were on­ly fit for drovers or gyp­sies, and not for young gen­tle­men.”

“If I had been you,” said Gin­ger, “I would have giv­en those boys a good kick, and that would have giv­en them a les­son.”

“No doubt you would,” said Mer­rylegs; “but then I am not quite such a fool (beg­ging your par­don) as to anger our mas­ter or make James ashamed of me. Be­sides, those chil­dren are un­der my charge when they are rid­ing; I tell you they are in­trust­ed to me. Why, on­ly the oth­er day I heard our mas­ter say to Mrs. Blome­field, `My dear madam, you need not be anx­ious about the chil­dren; my old Mer­rylegs will take as much care of them as you or I could; I as­sure you I would not sell that pony for any mon­ey, he is so per­fect­ly good-​tem­pered and trust­wor­thy;’ and do you think I am such an un­grate­ful brute as to for­get all the kind treat­ment I have had here for five years, and all the trust they place in me, and turn vi­cious be­cause a cou­ple of ig­no­rant boys used me bad­ly? No, no! you nev­er had a good place where they were kind to you, and so you don’t know, and I’m sor­ry for you; but I can tell you good places make good hors­es. I wouldn’t vex our peo­ple for any­thing; I love them, I do,” said Mer­rylegs, and he gave a low “ho, ho, ho!” through his nose, as he used to do in the morn­ing when he heard James’ foot­step at the door.

“Be­sides,” he went on, “if I took to kick­ing where should I be? Why, sold off in a jiffy, and no char­ac­ter, and I might find my­self slaved about un­der a butch­er’s boy, or worked to death at some sea­side place where no one cared for me, ex­cept to find out how fast I could go, or be flogged along in some cart with three or four great men in it go­ing out for a Sun­day spree, as I have of­ten seen in the place I lived in be­fore I came here; no,” said he, shak­ing his head, “I hope I shall nev­er come to that.”

10 A Talk in the Or­chard

Gin­ger and I were not of the reg­ular tall car­riage horse breed, we had more of the rac­ing blood in us. We stood about fif­teen and a half hands high; we were there­fore just as good for rid­ing as we were for driv­ing, and our mas­ter used to say that he dis­liked ei­ther horse or man that could do but one thing; and as he did not want to show off in Lon­don parks, he pre­ferred a more ac­tive and use­ful kind of horse. As for us, our great­est plea­sure was when we were sad­dled for a rid­ing par­ty; the mas­ter on Gin­ger, the mis­tress on me, and the young ladies on Sir Oliv­er and Mer­rylegs. It was so cheer­ful to be trot­ting and can­ter­ing all to­geth­er that it al­ways put us in high spir­its. I had the best of it, for I al­ways car­ried the mis­tress; her weight was lit­tle, her voice was sweet, and her hand was so light on the rein that I was guid­ed al­most with­out feel­ing it.

Oh! if peo­ple knew what a com­fort to hors­es a light hand is, and how it keeps a good mouth and a good tem­per, they sure­ly would not chuck, and drag, and pull at the rein as they of­ten do. Our mouths are so ten­der that where they have not been spoiled or hard­ened with bad or ig­no­rant treat­ment, they feel the slight­est move­ment of the driv­er’s hand, and we know in an in­stant what is re­quired of us. My mouth has nev­er been spoiled, and I be­lieve that was why the mis­tress pre­ferred me to Gin­ger, al­though her paces were cer­tain­ly quite as good. She used of­ten to en­vy me, and said it was all the fault of break­ing in, and the gag bit in Lon­don, that her mouth was not so per­fect as mine; and then old Sir Oliv­er would say, “There, there! don’t vex your­self; you have the great­est hon­or; a mare that can car­ry a tall man of our mas­ter’s weight, with all your spring and spright­ly ac­tion, does not need to hold her head down be­cause she does not car­ry the la­dy; we hors­es must take things as they come, and al­ways be con­tent­ed and will­ing so long as we are kind­ly used.”

I had of­ten won­dered how it was that Sir Oliv­er had such a very short tail; it re­al­ly was on­ly six or sev­en inch­es long, with a tas­sel of hair hang­ing from it; and on one of our hol­idays in the or­chard I ven­tured to ask him by what ac­ci­dent it was that he had lost his tail. “Ac­ci­dent!” he snort­ed with a fierce look, “it was no ac­ci­dent! it was a cru­el, shame­ful, cold-​blood­ed act! When I was young I was tak­en to a place where these cru­el things were done; I was tied up, and made fast so that I could not stir, and then they came and cut off my long and beau­ti­ful tail, through the flesh and through the bone, and took it away.

“How dread­ful!” I ex­claimed.

“Dread­ful, ah! it was dread­ful; but it was not on­ly the pain, though that was ter­ri­ble and last­ed a long time; it was not on­ly the in­dig­ni­ty of hav­ing my best or­na­ment tak­en from me, though that was bad; but it was this, how could I ev­er brush the flies off my sides and my hind legs any more? You who have tails just whisk the flies off with­out think­ing about it, and you can’t tell what a tor­ment it is to have them set­tle up­on you and sting and sting, and have noth­ing in the world to lash them off with. I tell you it is a life­long wrong, and a life­long loss; but thank heav­en, they don’t do it now.”

“What did they do it for then?” said Gin­ger.

“For fash­ion!” said the old horse with a stamp of his foot; “for fash­ion! if you know what that means; there was not a well-​bred young horse in my time that had not his tail docked in that shame­ful way, just as if the good God that made us did not know what we want­ed and what looked best.”

“I sup­pose it is fash­ion that makes them strap our heads up with those hor­rid bits that I was tor­tured with in Lon­don,” said Gin­ger.

“Of course it is,” said he; “to my mind, fash­ion is one of the wickedest things in the world. Now look, for in­stance, at the way they serve dogs, cut­ting off their tails to make them look plucky, and shear­ing up their pret­ty lit­tle ears to a point to make them both look sharp, for­sooth. I had a dear friend once, a brown ter­ri­er; `Skye’ they called her. She was so fond of me that she nev­er would sleep out of my stall; she made her bed un­der the manger, and there she had a lit­ter of five as pret­ty lit­tle pup­pies as need be; none were drowned, for they were a valu­able kind, and how pleased she was with them! and when they got their eyes open and crawled about, it was a re­al pret­ty sight; but one day the man came and took them all away; I thought he might be afraid I should tread up­on them. But it was not so; in the evening poor Skye brought them back again, one by one in her mouth; not the hap­py lit­tle things that they were, but bleed­ing and cry­ing piti­ful­ly; they had all had a piece of their tails cut off, and the soft flap of their pret­ty lit­tle ears was cut quite off. How their moth­er licked them, and how trou­bled she was, poor thing! I nev­er for­got it. They healed in time, and they for­got the pain, but the nice soft flap, that of course was in­tend­ed to pro­tect the del­icate part of their ears from dust and in­jury, was gone for­ev­er. Why don’t they cut their own chil­dren’s ears in­to points to make them look sharp? Why don’t they cut the end off their noses to make them look plucky? One would be just as sen­si­ble as the oth­er. What right have they to tor­ment and dis­fig­ure God’s crea­tures?”

Sir Oliv­er, though he was so gen­tle, was a fiery old fel­low, and what he said was all so new to me, and so dread­ful, that I found a bit­ter feel­ing to­ward men rise up in my mind that I nev­er had be­fore. Of course Gin­ger was very much ex­cit­ed; she flung up her head with flash­ing eyes and dis­tend­ed nos­trils, declar­ing that men were both brutes and block­heads.

“Who talks about block­heads?” said Mer­rylegs, who just came up from the old ap­ple-​tree, where he had been rub­bing him­self against the low branch. “Who talks about block­heads? I be­lieve that is a bad word.”

“Bad words were made for bad things,” said Gin­ger, and she told him what Sir Oliv­er had said.

“It is all true,” said Mer­rylegs sad­ly, “and I’ve seen that about the dogs over and over again where I lived first; but we won’t talk about it here. You know that mas­ter, and John and James are al­ways good to us, and talk­ing against men in such a place as this doesn’t seem fair or grate­ful, and you know there are good mas­ters and good grooms be­side ours, though of course ours are the best.”

This wise speech of good lit­tle Mer­rylegs, which we knew was quite true, cooled us all down, es­pe­cial­ly Sir Oliv­er, who was dear­ly fond of his mas­ter; and to turn the sub­ject I said, “Can any one tell me the use of blink­ers?”

“No!” said Sir Oliv­er short­ly, “be­cause they are no use.”

“They are sup­posed,” said Jus­tice, the roan cob, in his calm way, “to pre­vent hors­es from shy­ing and start­ing, and get­ting so fright­ened as to cause ac­ci­dents.”

“Then what is the rea­son they do not put them on rid­ing hors­es; es­pe­cial­ly on ladies’ hors­es?” said I.

“There is no rea­son at all,” said he qui­et­ly, “ex­cept the fash­ion; they say that a horse would be so fright­ened to see the wheels of his own cart or car­riage com­ing be­hind him that he would be sure to run away, al­though of course when he is rid­den he sees them all about him if the streets are crowd­ed. I ad­mit they do some­times come too close to be pleas­ant, but we don’t run away; we are used to it, and un­der­stand it, and if we nev­er had blink­ers put on we should nev­er want them; we should see what was there, and know what was what, and be much less fright­ened than by on­ly see­ing bits of things that we can’t un­der­stand. Of course there may be some ner­vous hors­es who have been hurt or fright­ened when they were young, who may be the bet­ter for them; but as I nev­er was ner­vous, I can’t judge.”

“I con­sid­er,” said Sir Oliv­er, “that blink­ers are dan­ger­ous things in the night; we hors­es can see much bet­ter in the dark than men can, and many an ac­ci­dent would nev­er have hap­pened if hors­es might have had the full use of their eyes. Some years ago, I re­mem­ber, there was a hearse with two hors­es re­turn­ing one dark night, and just by Farmer Spar­row’s house, where the pond is close to the road, the wheels went too near the edge, and the hearse was over­turned in­to the wa­ter; both the hors­es were drowned, and the driv­er hard­ly es­caped. Of course af­ter this ac­ci­dent a stout white rail was put up that might be eas­ily seen, but if those hors­es had not been part­ly blind­ed, they would of them­selves have kept fur­ther from the edge, and no ac­ci­dent would have hap­pened. When our mas­ter’s car­riage was over­turned, be­fore you came here, it was said that if the lamp on the left side had not gone out, John would have seen the great hole that the road-​mak­ers had left; and so he might, but if old Col­in had not had blink­ers on he would have seen it, lamp or no lamp, for he was far too know­ing an old horse to run in­to dan­ger. As it was, he was very much hurt, the car­riage was bro­ken, and how John es­caped no­body knew.”

“I should say,” said Gin­ger, curl­ing her nos­tril, “that these men, who are so wise, had bet­ter give or­ders that in the fu­ture all foals should be born with their eyes set just in the mid­dle of their fore­heads, in­stead of on the side; they al­ways think they can im­prove up­on na­ture and mend what God has made.”

Things were get­ting rather sore again, when Mer­rylegs held up his know­ing lit­tle face and said, “I’ll tell you a se­cret: I be­lieve John does not ap­prove of blink­ers; I heard him talk­ing with mas­ter about it one day. The mas­ter said that `if hors­es had been used to them, it might be dan­ger­ous in some cas­es to leave them off’; and John said he thought it would be a good thing if all colts were bro­ken in with­out blink­ers, as was the case in some for­eign coun­tries. So let us cheer up, and have a run to the oth­er end of the or­chard; I be­lieve the wind has blown down some ap­ples, and we might just as well eat them as the slugs.”

Mer­rylegs could not be re­sist­ed, so we broke off our long con­ver­sa­tion, and got up our spir­its by munch­ing some very sweet ap­ples which lay scat­tered on the grass.

11 Plain Speak­ing

The longer I lived at Birtwick the more proud and hap­py I felt at hav­ing such a place. Our mas­ter and mis­tress were re­spect­ed and beloved by all who knew them; they were good and kind to ev­ery­body and ev­ery­thing; not on­ly men and wom­en, but hors­es and don­keys, dogs and cats, cat­tle and birds; there was no op­pressed or ill-​used crea­ture that had not a friend in them, and their ser­vants took the same tone. If any of the vil­lage chil­dren were known to treat any crea­ture cru­el­ly they soon heard about it from the Hall.

The squire and Farmer Grey had worked to­geth­er, as they said, for more than twen­ty years to get check-​reins on the cart-​hors­es done away with, and in our parts you sel­dom saw them; and some­times, if mis­tress met a heav­ily laden horse with his head strained up she would stop the car­riage and get out, and rea­son with the driv­er in her sweet se­ri­ous voice, and try to show him how fool­ish and cru­el it was.

I don’t think any man could with­stand our mis­tress. I wish all ladies were like her. Our mas­ter, too, used to come down very heavy some­times. I re­mem­ber he was rid­ing me to­ward home one morn­ing when we saw a pow­er­ful man driv­ing to­ward us in a light pony chaise, with a beau­ti­ful lit­tle bay pony, with slen­der legs and a high-​bred sen­si­tive head and face. Just as he came to the park gates the lit­tle thing turned to­ward them; the man, with­out word or warn­ing, wrenched the crea­ture’s head round with such a force and sud­den­ness that he near­ly threw it on its haunch­es. Re­cov­er­ing it­self it was go­ing on, when he be­gan to lash it fu­ri­ous­ly. The pony plunged for­ward, but the strong, heavy hand held the pret­ty crea­ture back with force al­most enough to break its jaw, while the whip still cut in­to him. It was a dread­ful sight to me, for I knew what fear­ful pain it gave that del­icate lit­tle mouth; but mas­ter gave me the word, and we were up with him in a sec­ond.

“Sawyer,” he cried in a stern voice, “is that pony made of flesh and blood?”

“Flesh and blood and tem­per,” he said; “he’s too fond of his own will, and that won’t suit me.” He spoke as if he was in a strong pas­sion. He was a builder who had of­ten been to the park on busi­ness.

“And do you think,” said mas­ter stern­ly, “that treat­ment like this will make him fond of your will?”

“He had no busi­ness to make that turn; his road was straight on!” said the man rough­ly.

“You have of­ten driv­en that pony up to my place,” said mas­ter; “it on­ly shows the crea­ture’s mem­ory and in­tel­li­gence; how did he know that you were not go­ing there again? But that has lit­tle to do with it. I must say, Mr. Sawyer, that a more un­man­ly, bru­tal treat­ment of a lit­tle pony it was nev­er my painful lot to wit­ness, and by giv­ing way to such pas­sion you in­jure your own char­ac­ter as much, nay more, than you in­jure your horse; and re­mem­ber, we shall all have to be judged ac­cord­ing to our works, whether they be to­ward man or to­ward beast.”

Mas­ter rode me home slow­ly, and I could tell by his voice how the thing had grieved him. He was just as free to speak to gen­tle­men of his own rank as to those be­low him; for an­oth­er day, when we were out, we met a Cap­tain Lan­gley, a friend of our mas­ter’s; he was driv­ing a splen­did pair of grays in a kind of break. Af­ter a lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion the cap­tain said:

“What do you think of my new team, Mr. Dou­glas? You know, you are the judge of hors­es in these parts, and I should like your opin­ion.”

The mas­ter backed me a lit­tle, so as to get a good view of them. “They are an un­com­mon­ly hand­some pair,” he said, “and if they are as good as they look I am sure you need not wish for any­thing bet­ter; but I see you still hold that pet scheme of yours for wor­ry­ing your hors­es and less­en­ing their pow­er.”

“What do you mean,” said the oth­er, “the check-​reins? Oh, ah! I know that’s a hob­by of yours; well, the fact is, I like to see my hors­es hold their heads up.”

“So do I,” said mas­ter, “as well as any man, but I don’t like to see them held up; that takes all the shine out of it. Now, you are a mil­itary man, Lan­gley, and no doubt like to see your reg­iment look well on pa­rade, `heads up’, and all that; but you would not take much cred­it for your drill if all your men had their heads tied to a back­board! It might not be much harm on pa­rade, ex­cept to wor­ry and fa­tigue them; but how would it be in a bay­onet charge against the en­emy, when they want the free use of ev­ery mus­cle, and all their strength thrown for­ward? I would not give much for their chance of vic­to­ry. And it is just the same with hors­es: you fret and wor­ry their tem­pers, and de­crease their pow­er; you will not let them throw their weight against their work, and so they have to do too much with their joints and mus­cles, and of course it wears them up faster. You may de­pend up­on it, hors­es were in­tend­ed to have their heads free, as free as men’s are; and if we could act a lit­tle more ac­cord­ing to com­mon sense, and a good deal less ac­cord­ing to fash­ion, we should find many things work eas­ier; be­sides, you know as well as I that if a horse makes a false step, he has much less chance of re­cov­er­ing him­self if his head and neck are fas­tened back. And now,” said the mas­ter, laugh­ing, “I have giv­en my hob­by a good trot out, can’t you make up your mind to mount him, too, cap­tain? Your ex­am­ple would go a long way.”

“I be­lieve you are right in the­ory,” said the oth­er, “and that’s rather a hard hit about the sol­diers; but — well — I’ll think about it,” and so they part­ed.

12 A Stormy Day

One day late in the au­tumn my mas­ter had a long jour­ney to go on busi­ness. I was put in­to the dog-​cart, and John went with his mas­ter. I al­ways liked to go in the dog-​cart, it was so light and the high wheels ran along so pleas­ant­ly. There had been a great deal of rain, and now the wind was very high and blew the dry leaves across the road in a show­er. We went along mer­ri­ly till we came to the toll-​bar and the low wood­en bridge. The riv­er banks were rather high, and the bridge, in­stead of ris­ing, went across just lev­el, so that in the mid­dle, if the riv­er was full, the wa­ter would be near­ly up to the wood­work and planks; but as there were good sub­stan­tial rails on each side, peo­ple did not mind it.

The man at the gate said the riv­er was ris­ing fast, and he feared it would be a bad night. Many of the mead­ows were un­der wa­ter, and in one low part of the road the wa­ter was halfway up to my knees; the bot­tom was good, and mas­ter drove gen­tly, so it was no mat­ter.

When we got to the town of course I had a good bait, but as the mas­ter’s busi­ness en­gaged him a long time we did not start for home till rather late in the af­ter­noon. The wind was then much high­er, and I heard the mas­ter say to John that he had nev­er been out in such a storm; and so I thought, as we went along the skirts of a wood, where the great branch­es were sway­ing about like twigs, and the rush­ing sound was ter­ri­ble.

“I wish we were well out of this wood,” said my mas­ter.

“Yes, sir,” said John, “it would be rather awk­ward if one of these branch­es came down up­on us.”

The words were scarce­ly out of his mouth when there was a groan, and a crack, and a split­ting sound, and tear­ing, crash­ing down among the oth­er trees came an oak, torn up by the roots, and it fell right across the road just be­fore us. I will nev­er say I was not fright­ened, for I was. I stopped still, and I be­lieve I trem­bled; of course I did not turn round or run away; I was not brought up to that. John jumped out and was in a mo­ment at my head.

“That was a very near touch,” said my mas­ter. “What’s to be done now?”

“Well, sir, we can’t drive over that tree, nor yet get round it; there will be noth­ing for it, but to go back to the four cross­ways, and that will be a good six miles be­fore we get round to the wood­en bridge again; it will make us late, but the horse is fresh.”

So back we went and round by the cross­roads, but by the time we got to the bridge it was very near­ly dark; we could just see that the wa­ter was over the mid­dle of it; but as that hap­pened some­times when the floods were out, mas­ter did not stop. We were go­ing along at a good pace, but the mo­ment my feet touched the first part of the bridge I felt sure there was some­thing wrong. I dare not go for­ward, and I made a dead stop. “Go on, Beau­ty,” said my mas­ter, and he gave me a touch with the whip, but I dare not stir; he gave me a sharp cut; I jumped, but I dare not go for­ward.

“There’s some­thing wrong, sir,” said John, and he sprang out of the dog-​cart and came to my head and looked all about. He tried to lead me for­ward. “Come on, Beau­ty, what’s the mat­ter?” Of course I could not tell him, but I knew very well that the bridge was not safe.

Just then the man at the toll-​gate on the oth­er side ran out of the house, toss­ing a torch about like one mad.

“Hoy, hoy, hoy! hal­loo! stop!” he cried.

“What’s the mat­ter?” shout­ed my mas­ter.

“The bridge is bro­ken in the mid­dle, and part of it is car­ried away; if you come on you’ll be in­to the riv­er.”

“Thank God!” said my mas­ter. “You Beau­ty!” said John, and took the bri­dle and gen­tly turned me round to the right-​hand road by the riv­er side. The sun had set some time; the wind seemed to have lulled off af­ter that fu­ri­ous blast which tore up the tree. It grew dark­er and dark­er, stiller and stiller. I trot­ted qui­et­ly along, the wheels hard­ly mak­ing a sound on the soft road. For a good while nei­ther mas­ter nor John spoke, and then mas­ter be­gan in a se­ri­ous voice. I could not un­der­stand much of what they said, but I found they thought, if I had gone on as the mas­ter want­ed me, most like­ly the bridge would have giv­en way un­der us, and horse, chaise, mas­ter, and man would have fall­en in­to the riv­er; and as the cur­rent was flow­ing very strong­ly, and there was no light and no help at hand, it was more than like­ly we should all have been drowned. Mas­ter said, God had giv­en men rea­son, by which they could find out things for them­selves; but he had giv­en an­imals knowl­edge which did not de­pend on rea­son, and which was much more prompt and per­fect in its way, and by which they had of­ten saved the lives of men. John had many sto­ries to tell of dogs and hors­es, and the won­der­ful things they had done; he thought peo­ple did not val­ue their an­imals half enough nor make friends of them as they ought to do. I am sure he makes friends of them if ev­er a man did.

At last we came to the park gates and found the gar­den­er look­ing out for us. He said that mis­tress had been in a dread­ful way ev­er since dark, fear­ing some ac­ci­dent had hap­pened, and that she had sent James off on Jus­tice, the roan cob, to­ward the wood­en bridge to make in­quiry af­ter us.

We saw a light at the hall-​door and at the up­per win­dows, and as we came up mis­tress ran out, say­ing, “Are you re­al­ly safe, my dear? Oh! I have been so anx­ious, fan­cy­ing all sorts of things. Have you had no ac­ci­dent?”

“No, my dear; but if your Black Beau­ty had not been wis­er than we were we should all have been car­ried down the riv­er at the wood­en bridge.” I heard no more, as they went in­to the house, and John took me to the sta­ble. Oh, what a good sup­per he gave me that night, a good bran mash and some crushed beans with my oats, and such a thick bed of straw! and I was glad of it, for I was tired.

13 The Dev­il’s Trade Mark

One day when John and I had been out on some busi­ness of our mas­ter’s, and were re­turn­ing gen­tly on a long, straight road, at some dis­tance we saw a boy try­ing to leap a pony over a gate; the pony would not take the leap, and the boy cut him with the whip, but he on­ly turned off on one side. He whipped him again, but the pony turned off on the oth­er side. Then the boy got off and gave him a hard thrash­ing, and knocked him about the head; then he got up again and tried to make him leap the gate, kick­ing him all the time shame­ful­ly, but still the pony re­fused. When we were near­ly at the spot the pony put down his head and threw up his heels, and sent the boy neat­ly over in­to a broad quick­set hedge, and with the rein dan­gling from his head he set off home at a full gal­lop. John laughed out quite loud. “Served him right,” he said.

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the boy as he strug­gled about among the thorns; “I say, come and help me out.”

“Thank ye,” said John, “I think you are quite in the right place, and maybe a lit­tle scratch­ing will teach you not to leap a pony over a gate that is too high for him,” and so with that John rode off. “It may be,” said he to him­self, “that young fel­low is a liar as well as a cru­el one; we’ll just go home by Farmer Bush­by’s, Beau­ty, and then if any­body wants to know you and I can tell ‘em, ye see.” So we turned off to the right, and soon came up to the stack-​yard, and with­in sight of the house. The farmer was hur­ry­ing out in­to the road, and his wife was stand­ing at the gate, look­ing very fright­ened.

“Have you seen my boy?” said Mr. Bush­by as we came up; “he went out an hour ago on my black pony, and the crea­ture is just come back with­out a rid­er.”

“I should think, sir,” said John, “he had bet­ter be with­out a rid­er, un­less he can be rid­den prop­er­ly.”

“What do you mean?” said the farmer.

“Well, sir, I saw your son whip­ping, and kick­ing, and knock­ing that good lit­tle pony about shame­ful­ly be­cause he would not leap a gate that was too high for him. The pony be­haved well, sir, and showed no vice; but at last he just threw up his heels and tipped the young gen­tle­man in­to the thorn hedge. He want­ed me to help him out, but I hope you will ex­cuse me, sir, I did not feel in­clined to do so. There’s no bones bro­ken, sir; he’ll on­ly get a few scratch­es. I love hors­es, and it riles me to see them bad­ly used; it is a bad plan to ag­gra­vate an an­imal till he us­es his heels; the first time is not al­ways the last.”

Dur­ing this time the moth­er be­gan to cry, “Oh, my poor Bill, I must go and meet him; he must be hurt.”

“You had bet­ter go in­to the house, wife,” said the farmer; “Bill wants a les­son about this, and I must see that he gets it; this is not the first time, nor the sec­ond, that he has ill-​used that pony, and I shall stop it. I am much obliged to you, Man­ly. Good-​evening.”

So we went on, John chuck­ling all the way home; then he told James about it, who laughed and said, “Serve him right. I knew that boy at school; he took great airs on him­self be­cause he was a farmer’s son; he used to swag­ger about and bul­ly the lit­tle boys. Of course, we el­der ones would not have any of that non­sense, and let him know that in the school and the play­ground farm­ers’ sons and la­bor­ers’ sons were all alike. I well re­mem­ber one day, just be­fore af­ter­noon school, I found him at the large win­dow catch­ing flies and pulling off their wings. He did not see me and I gave him a box on the ears that laid him sprawl­ing on the floor. Well, an­gry as I was, I was al­most fright­ened, he roared and bel­lowed in such a style. The boys rushed in from the play­ground, and the mas­ter ran in from the road to see who was be­ing mur­dered. Of course I said fair and square at once what I had done, and why; then I showed the mas­ter the flies, some crushed and some crawl­ing about help­less, and I showed him the wings on the win­dow sill. I nev­er saw him so an­gry be­fore; but as Bill was still howl­ing and whin­ing, like the cow­ard that he was, he did not give him any more pun­ish­ment of that kind, but set him up on a stool for the rest of the af­ter­noon, and said that he should not go out to play for that week. Then he talked to all the boys very se­ri­ous­ly about cru­el­ty, and said how hard-​heart­ed and cow­ard­ly it was to hurt the weak and the help­less; but what stuck in my mind was this, he said that cru­el­ty was the dev­il’s own trade-​mark, and if we saw any one who took plea­sure in cru­el­ty we might know who he be­longed to, for the dev­il was a mur­der­er from the be­gin­ning, and a tor­men­tor to the end. On the oth­er hand, where we saw peo­ple who loved their neigh­bors, and were kind to man and beast, we might know that was God’s mark.”

“Your mas­ter nev­er taught you a truer thing,” said John; “there is no re­li­gion with­out love, and peo­ple may talk as much as they like about their re­li­gion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast it is all a sham — all a sham, James, and it won’t stand when things come to be turned in­side out.”

14 James Howard

Ear­ly one morn­ing in De­cem­ber John had just led me in­to my box af­ter my dai­ly ex­er­cise, and was strap­ping my cloth on and James was com­ing in from the corn cham­ber with some oats, when the mas­ter came in­to the sta­ble. He looked rather se­ri­ous, and held an open let­ter in his hand. John fas­tened the door of my box, touched his cap, and wait­ed for or­ders.

“Good-​morn­ing, John,” said the mas­ter. “I want to know if you have any com­plaint to make of James.”

“Com­plaint, sir? No, sir.”

“Is he in­dus­tri­ous at his work and re­spect­ful to you?”

“Yes, sir, al­ways.”

“You nev­er find he slights his work when your back is turned?”

“Nev­er, sir.”

“That’s well; but I must put an­oth­er ques­tion. Have you no rea­son to sus­pect, when he goes out with the hors­es to ex­er­cise them or to take a mes­sage, that he stops about talk­ing to his ac­quain­tances, or goes in­to hous­es where he has no busi­ness, leav­ing the hors­es out­side?”

“No, sir, cer­tain­ly not; and if any­body has been say­ing that about James, I don’t be­lieve it, and I don’t mean to be­lieve it un­less I have it fair­ly proved be­fore wit­ness­es; it’s not for me to say who has been try­ing to take away James’ char­ac­ter, but I will say this, sir, that a stead­ier, pleas­an­ter, hon­ester, smarter young fel­low I nev­er had in this sta­ble. I can trust his word and I can trust his work; he is gen­tle and clever with the hors­es, and I would rather have them in charge with him than with half the young fel­lows I know of in laced hats and liv­er­ies; and who­ev­er wants a char­ac­ter of James Howard,” said John, with a de­cid­ed jerk of his head, “let them come to John Man­ly.”

The mas­ter stood all this time grave and at­ten­tive, but as John fin­ished his speech a broad smile spread over his face, and look­ing kind­ly across at James, who all this time had stood still at the door, he said, “James, my lad, set down the oats and come here; I am very glad to find that John’s opin­ion of your char­ac­ter agrees so ex­act­ly with my own. John is a cau­tious man,” he said, with a droll smile, “and it is not al­ways easy to get his opin­ion about peo­ple, so I thought if I beat the bush on this side the birds would fly out, and I should learn what I want­ed to know quick­ly; so now we will come to busi­ness. I have a let­ter from my broth­er-​in-​law, Sir Clif­ford Williams, of Clif­ford Hall. He wants me to find him a trust­wor­thy young groom, about twen­ty or twen­ty-​one, who knows his busi­ness. His old coach­man, who has lived with him thir­ty years, is get­ting fee­ble, and he wants a man to work with him and get in­to his ways, who would be able, when the old man was pen­sioned off, to step in­to his place. He would have eigh­teen shillings a week at first, a sta­ble suit, a driv­ing suit, a bed­room over the coach­house, and a boy un­der him. Sir Clif­ford is a good mas­ter, and if you could get the place it would be a good start for you. I don’t want to part with you, and if you left us I know John would lose his right hand.”

“That I should, sir,” said John, “but I would not stand in his light for the world.”

“How old are you, James?” said mas­ter.

“Nine­teen next May, sir.”

“That’s young; what do you think, John?”

“Well, sir, it is young; but he is as steady as a man, and is strong, and well grown, and though he has not had much ex­pe­ri­ence in driv­ing, he has a light firm hand and a quick eye, and he is very care­ful, and I am quite sure no horse of his will be ru­ined for want of hav­ing his feet and shoes looked af­ter.”

“Your word will go the fur­thest, John,” said the mas­ter, “for Sir Clif­ford adds in a postscript, `If I could find a man trained by your John I should like him bet­ter than any oth­er;’ so, James, lad, think it over, talk to your moth­er at din­ner-​time, and then let me know what you wish.”

In a few days af­ter this con­ver­sa­tion it was ful­ly set­tled that James should go to Clif­ford Hall, in a month or six weeks, as it suit­ed his mas­ter, and in the mean­time he was to get all the prac­tice in driv­ing that could be giv­en to him. I nev­er knew the car­riage to go out so of­ten be­fore; when the mis­tress did not go out the mas­ter drove him­self in the two-​wheeled chaise; but now, whether it was mas­ter or the young ladies, or on­ly an er­rand, Gin­ger and I were put in the car­riage and James drove us. At the first John rode with him on the box, telling him this and that, and af­ter that James drove alone.

Then it was won­der­ful what a num­ber of places the mas­ter would go to in the city on Sat­ur­day, and what queer streets we were driv­en through. He was sure to go to the rail­way sta­tion just as the train was com­ing in, and cabs and car­riages, carts and om­nibus­es were all try­ing to get over the bridge to­geth­er; that bridge want­ed good hors­es and good drivers when the rail­way bell was ring­ing, for it was nar­row, and there was a very sharp turn up to the sta­tion, where it would not have been at all dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to run in­to each oth­er, if they did not look sharp and keep their wits about them.

15 The Old Hostler

Af­ter this it was de­cid­ed by my mas­ter and mis­tress to pay a vis­it to some friends who lived about forty-​six miles from our home, and James was to drive them. The first day we trav­eled thir­ty-​two miles. There were some long, heavy hills, but James drove so care­ful­ly and thought­ful­ly that we were not at all ha­rassed. He nev­er for­got to put on the brake as we went down­hill, nor to take it off at the right place. He kept our feet on the smoothest part of the road, and if the up­hill was very long, he set the car­riage wheels a lit­tle across the road, so as not to run back, and gave us a breath­ing. All these lit­tle things help a horse very much, par­tic­ular­ly if he gets kind words in­to the bar­gain.

We stopped once or twice on the road, and just as the sun was go­ing down we reached the town where we were to spend the night. We stopped at the prin­ci­pal ho­tel, which was in the mar­ket-​place; it was a very large one; we drove un­der an arch­way in­to a long yard, at the fur­ther end of which were the sta­bles and coach­hous­es. Two hostlers came to take us out. The head hostler was a pleas­ant, ac­tive lit­tle man, with a crooked leg, and a yel­low striped waist­coat. I nev­er saw a man un­buck­le har­ness so quick­ly as he did, and with a pat and a good word he led me to a long sta­ble, with six or eight stalls in it, and two or three hors­es. The oth­er man brought Gin­ger; James stood by while we were rubbed down and cleaned.

I nev­er was cleaned so light­ly and quick­ly as by that lit­tle old man. When he had done James stepped up and felt me over, as if he thought I could not be thor­ough­ly done, but he found my coat as clean and smooth as silk.

“Well,” he said, “I thought I was pret­ty quick, and our John quick­er still, but you do beat all I ev­er saw for be­ing quick and thor­ough at the same time.”

“Prac­tice makes per­fect,” said the crooked lit­tle hostler, “and ‘twould be a pity if it didn’t; forty years’ prac­tice, and not per­fect! ha, ha! that would be a pity; and as to be­ing quick, why, bless you! that is on­ly a mat­ter of habit; if you get in­to the habit of be­ing quick it is just as easy as be­ing slow; eas­ier, I should say; in fact it don’t agree with my health to be hulk­ing about over a job twice as long as it need take. Bless you! I couldn’t whis­tle if I crawled over my work as some folks do! You see, I have been about hors­es ev­er since I was twelve years old, in hunt­ing sta­bles, and rac­ing sta­bles; and be­ing small, ye see, I was jock­ey for sev­er­al years; but at the Good­wood, ye see, the turf was very slip­pery and my poor Lark­spur got a fall, and I broke my knee, and so of course I was of no more use there. But I could not live with­out hors­es, of course I couldn’t, so I took to the ho­tels. And I can tell ye it is a down­right plea­sure to han­dle an an­imal like this, well-​bred, well-​man­nered, well-​cared-​for; bless ye! I can tell how a horse is treat­ed. Give me the han­dling of a horse for twen­ty min­utes, and I’ll tell you what sort of a groom he has had. Look at this one, pleas­ant, qui­et, turns about just as you want him, holds up his feet to be cleaned out, or any­thing else you please to wish; then you’ll find an­oth­er fid­gety, fret­ty, won’t move the right way, or starts across the stall, toss­es up his head as soon as you come near him, lays his ears, and seems afraid of you; or else squares about at you with his heels. Poor things! I know what sort of treat­ment they have had. If they are timid it makes them start or shy; if they are high-​met­tled it makes them vi­cious or dan­ger­ous; their tem­pers are most­ly made when they are young. Bless you! they are like chil­dren, train ‘em up in the way they should go, as the good book says, and when they are old they will not de­part from it, if they have a chance.”

“I like to hear you talk,” said James, “that’s the way we lay it down at home, at our mas­ter’s.”

“Who is your mas­ter, young man? if it be a prop­er ques­tion. I should judge he is a good one, from what I see.”

“He is Squire Gor­don, of Birtwick Park, the oth­er side the Bea­con Hills,” said James.

“Ah! so, so, I have heard tell of him; fine judge of hors­es, ain’t he? the best rid­er in the coun­ty.”

“I be­lieve he is,” said James, “but he rides very lit­tle now, since the poor young mas­ter was killed.”

“Ah! poor gen­tle­man; I read all about it in the pa­per at the time. A fine horse killed, too, wasn’t there?”

“Yes,” said James; “he was a splen­did crea­ture, broth­er to this one, and just like him.”

“Pity! pity!” said the old man; “’twas a bad place to leap, if I re­mem­ber; a thin fence at top, a steep bank down to the stream, wasn’t it? No chance for a horse to see where he is go­ing. Now, I am for bold rid­ing as much as any man, but still there are some leaps that on­ly a very know­ing old hunts­man has any right to take. A man’s life and a horse’s life are worth more than a fox’s tail; at least, I should say they ought to be.”

Dur­ing this time the oth­er man had fin­ished Gin­ger and had brought our corn, and James and the old man left the sta­ble to­geth­er.

16 The Fire

Lat­er on in the evening a trav­el­er’s horse was brought in by the sec­ond hostler, and while he was clean­ing him a young man with a pipe in his mouth lounged in­to the sta­ble to gos­sip.

“I say, Towler,” said the hostler, “just run up the lad­der in­to the loft and put some hay down in­to this horse’s rack, will you? on­ly lay down your pipe.”

“All right,” said the oth­er, and went up through the trap­door; and I heard him step across the floor over­head and put down the hay. James came in to look at us the last thing, and then the door was locked.

I can­not say how long I had slept, nor what time in the night it was, but I woke up very un­com­fort­able, though I hard­ly knew why. I got up; the air seemed all thick and chok­ing. I heard Gin­ger cough­ing and one of the oth­er hors­es seemed very rest­less; it was quite dark, and I could see noth­ing, but the sta­ble seemed full of smoke, and I hard­ly knew how to breathe.

The trap­door had been left open, and I thought that was the place it came through. I lis­tened, and heard a soft rush­ing sort of noise and a low crack­ling and snap­ping. I did not know what it was, but there was some­thing in the sound so strange that it made me trem­ble all over. The oth­er hors­es were all awake; some were pulling at their hal­ters, oth­ers stamp­ing.

At last I heard steps out­side, and the hostler who had put up the trav­el­er’s horse burst in­to the sta­ble with a lantern, and be­gan to un­tie the hors­es, and try to lead them out; but he seemed in such a hur­ry and so fright­ened him­self that he fright­ened me still more. The first horse would not go with him; he tried the sec­ond and third, and they too would not stir. He came to me next and tried to drag me out of the stall by force; of course that was no use. He tried us all by turns and then left the sta­ble.

No doubt we were very fool­ish, but dan­ger seemed to be all round, and there was no­body we knew to trust in, and all was strange and un­cer­tain. The fresh air that had come in through the open door made it eas­ier to breathe, but the rush­ing sound over­head grew loud­er, and as I looked up­ward through the bars of my emp­ty rack I saw a red light flick­er­ing on the wall. Then I heard a cry of “Fire!” out­side, and the old hostler qui­et­ly and quick­ly came in; he got one horse out, and went to an­oth­er, but the flames were play­ing round the trap­door, and the roar­ing over­head was dread­ful.

The next thing I heard was James’ voice, qui­et and cheery, as it al­ways was.

“Come, my beau­ties, it is time for us to be off, so wake up and come along.” I stood near­est the door, so he came to me first, pat­ting me as he came in.

“Come, Beau­ty, on with your bri­dle, my boy, we’ll soon be out of this smoth­er.” It was on in no time; then he took the scarf off his neck, and tied it light­ly over my eyes, and pat­ting and coax­ing he led me out of the sta­ble. Safe in the yard, he slipped the scarf off my eyes, and shout­ed, “Here some­body! take this horse while I go back for the oth­er.”

A tall, broad man stepped for­ward and took me, and James dart­ed back in­to the sta­ble. I set up a shrill whin­ny as I saw him go. Gin­ger told me af­ter­ward that whin­ny was the best thing I could have done for her, for had she not heard me out­side she would nev­er have had courage to come out.

There was much con­fu­sion in the yard; the hors­es be­ing got out of oth­er sta­bles, and the car­riages and gigs be­ing pulled out of hous­es and sheds, lest the flames should spread fur­ther. On the oth­er side the yard win­dows were thrown up, and peo­ple were shout­ing all sorts of things; but I kept my eye fixed on the sta­ble door, where the smoke poured out thick­er than ev­er, and I could see flash­es of red light; present­ly I heard above all the stir and din a loud, clear voice, which I knew was mas­ter’s:

“James Howard! James Howard! Are you there?” There was no an­swer, but I heard a crash of some­thing falling in the sta­ble, and the next mo­ment I gave a loud, joy­ful neigh, for I saw James com­ing through the smoke lead­ing Gin­ger with him; she was cough­ing vi­olent­ly, and he was not able to speak.

“My brave lad!” said mas­ter, lay­ing his hand on his shoul­der, “are you hurt?”

James shook his head, for he could not yet speak.

“Ay,” said the big man who held me; “he is a brave lad, and no mis­take.”

“And now,” said mas­ter, “when you have got your breath, James, we’ll get out of this place as quick­ly as we can,” and we were mov­ing to­ward the en­try, when from the mar­ket-​place there came a sound of gal­lop­ing feet and loud rum­bling wheels.

“‘Tis the fire-​en­gine! the fire-​en­gine!” shout­ed two or three voic­es, “stand back, make way!” and clat­ter­ing and thun­der­ing over the stones two hors­es dashed in­to the yard with a heavy en­gine be­hind them. The fire­men leaped to the ground; there was no need to ask where the fire was — it was rolling up in a great blaze from the roof.

We got out as fast as we could in­to the broad qui­et mar­ket-​place; the stars were shin­ing, and ex­cept the noise be­hind us, all was still. Mas­ter led the way to a large ho­tel on the oth­er side, and as soon as the hostler came, he said, “James, I must now has­ten to your mis­tress; I trust the hors­es en­tire­ly to you, or­der what­ev­er you think is need­ed,” and with that he was gone. The mas­ter did not run, but I nev­er saw mor­tal man walk so fast as he did that night.

There was a dread­ful sound be­fore we got in­to our stalls — the shrieks of those poor hors­es that were left burn­ing to death in the sta­ble — it was very ter­ri­ble! and made both Gin­ger and me feel very bad. We, how­ev­er, were tak­en in and well done by.

The next morn­ing the mas­ter came to see how we were and to speak to James. I did not hear much, for the hostler was rub­bing me down, but I could see that James looked very hap­py, and I thought the mas­ter was proud of him. Our mis­tress had been so much alarmed in the night that the jour­ney was put off till the af­ter­noon, so James had the morn­ing on hand, and went first to the inn to see about our har­ness and the car­riage, and then to hear more about the fire. When he came back we heard him tell the hostler about it. At first no one could guess how the fire had been caused, but at last a man said he saw Dick Towler go in­to the sta­ble with a pipe in his mouth, and when he came out he had not one, and went to the tap for an­oth­er. Then the un­der hostler said he had asked Dick to go up the lad­der to put down some hay, but told him to lay down his pipe first. Dick de­nied tak­ing the pipe with him, but no one be­lieved him. I re­mem­ber our John Man­ly’s rule, nev­er to al­low a pipe in the sta­ble, and thought it ought to be the rule ev­ery­where.

James said the roof and floor had all fall­en in, and that on­ly the black walls were stand­ing; the two poor hors­es that could not be got out were buried un­der the burnt rafters and tiles.

17 John Man­ly’s Talk

The rest of our jour­ney was very easy, and a lit­tle af­ter sun­set we reached the house of my mas­ter’s friend. We were tak­en in­to a clean, snug sta­ble; there was a kind coach­man, who made us very com­fort­able, and who seemed to think a good deal of James when he heard about the fire.

“There is one thing quite clear, young man,” he said, “your hors­es know who they can trust; it is one of the hard­est things in the world to get hors­es out of a sta­ble when there is ei­ther fire or flood. I don’t know why they won’t come out, but they won’t — not one in twen­ty.”

We stopped two or three days at this place and then re­turned home. All went well on the jour­ney; we were glad to be in our own sta­ble again, and John was equal­ly glad to see us.

Be­fore he and James left us for the night James said, “I won­der who is com­ing in my place.”

“Lit­tle Joe Green at the lodge,” said John.

“Lit­tle Joe Green! why, he’s a child!”

“He is four­teen and a half,” said John.

“But he is such a lit­tle chap!”

“Yes, he is small, but he is quick and will­ing, and kind-​heart­ed, too, and then he wish­es very much to come, and his fa­ther would like it; and I know the mas­ter would like to give him the chance. He said if I thought he would not do he would look out for a big­ger boy; but I said I was quite agree­able to try him for six weeks.”

“Six weeks!” said James; “why, it will be six months be­fore he can be of much use! It will make you a deal of work, John.”

“Well,” said John with a laugh, “work and I are very good friends; I nev­er was afraid of work yet.”

“You are a very good man,” said James. “I wish I may ev­er be like you.”

“I don’t of­ten speak of my­self,” said John, “but as you are go­ing away from us out in­to the world to shift for your­self I’ll just tell you how I look on these things. I was just as old as Joseph when my fa­ther and moth­er died of the fever with­in ten days of each oth­er, and left me and my crip­ple sis­ter Nel­ly alone in the world, with­out a re­la­tion that we could look to for help. I was a farmer’s boy, not earn­ing enough to keep my­self, much less both of us, and she must have gone to the work­house but for our mis­tress (Nel­ly calls her her an­gel, and she has good right to do so). She went and hired a room for her with old Wid­ow Mal­let, and she gave her knit­ting and needle­work when she was able to do it; and when she was ill she sent her din­ners and many nice, com­fort­able things, and was like a moth­er to her. Then the mas­ter he took me in­to the sta­ble un­der old Nor­man, the coach­man that was then. I had my food at the house and my bed in the loft, and a suit of clothes, and three shillings a week, so that I could help Nel­ly. Then there was Nor­man; he might have turned round and said at his age he could not be trou­bled with a raw boy from the plow-​tail, but he was like a fa­ther to me, and took no end of pains with me. When the old man died some years af­ter I stepped in­to his place, and now of course I have top wages, and can lay by for a rainy day or a sun­ny day, as it may hap­pen, and Nel­ly is as hap­py as a bird. So you see, James, I am not the man that should turn up his nose at a lit­tle boy and vex a good, kind mas­ter. No, no! I shall miss you very much, James, but we shall pull through, and there’s noth­ing like do­ing a kind­ness when ’tis put in your way, and I am glad I can do it.”

“Then,” said James, “you don’t hold with that say­ing, `Ev­ery­body look af­ter him­self, and take care of num­ber one’?”

“No, in­deed,” said John, “where should I and Nel­ly have been if mas­ter and mis­tress and old Nor­man had on­ly tak­en care of num­ber one? Why, she in the work­house and I hoe­ing turnips! Where would Black Beau­ty and Gin­ger have been if you had on­ly thought of num­ber one? why, roast­ed to death! No, Jim, no! that is a self­ish, hea­then­ish say­ing, who­ev­er us­es it; and any man who thinks he has noth­ing to do but take care of num­ber one, why, it’s a pity but what he had been drowned like a pup­py or a kit­ten, be­fore he got his eyes open; that’s what I think,” said John, with a very de­cid­ed jerk of his head.

James laughed at this; but there was a thick­ness in his voice when he said, “You have been my best friend ex­cept my moth­er; I hope you won’t for­get me.”

“No, lad, no!” said John, “and if ev­er I can do you a good turn I hope you won’t for­get me.”

The next day Joe came to the sta­bles to learn all he could be­fore James left. He learned to sweep the sta­ble, to bring in the straw and hay; he be­gan to clean the har­ness, and helped to wash the car­riage. As he was quite too short to do any­thing in the way of groom­ing Gin­ger and me, James taught him up­on Mer­rylegs, for he was to have full charge of him, un­der John. He was a nice lit­tle bright fel­low, and al­ways came whistling to his work.

Mer­rylegs was a good deal put out at be­ing “mauled about,” as he said, “by a boy who knew noth­ing;” but to­ward the end of the sec­ond week he told me con­fi­den­tial­ly that he thought the boy would turn out well.

At last the day came when James had to leave us; cheer­ful as he al­ways was, he looked quite down-​heart­ed that morn­ing.

“You see,” he said to John, “I am leav­ing a great deal be­hind; my moth­er and Bet­sy, and you, and a good mas­ter and mis­tress, and then the hors­es, and my old Mer­rylegs. At the new place there will not be a soul that I shall know. If it were not that I shall get a high­er place, and be able to help my moth­er bet­ter, I don’t think I should have made up my mind to it; it is a re­al pinch, John.”

“Ay, James, lad, so it is; but I should not think much of you if you could leave your home for the first time and not feel it. Cheer up, you’ll make friends there; and if you get on well, as I am sure you will, it will be a fine thing for your moth­er, and she will be proud enough that you have got in­to such a good place as that.”

So John cheered him up, but ev­ery one was sor­ry to lose James; as for Mer­rylegs, he pined af­ter him for sev­er­al days, and went quite off his ap­petite. So John took him out sev­er­al morn­ings with a lead­ing rein, when he ex­er­cised me, and, trot­ting and gal­lop­ing by my side, got up the lit­tle fel­low’s spir­its again, and he was soon all right.

Joe’s fa­ther would of­ten come in and give a lit­tle help, as he un­der­stood the work; and Joe took a great deal of pains to learn, and John was quite en­cour­aged about him.

18 Go­ing for the Doc­tor

One night, a few days af­ter James had left, I had eat­en my hay and was ly­ing down in my straw fast asleep, when I was sud­den­ly roused by the sta­ble bell ring­ing very loud. I heard the door of John’s house open, and his feet run­ning up to the hall. He was back again in no time; he un­locked the sta­ble door, and came in, call­ing out, “Wake up, Beau­ty! You must go well now, if ev­er you did;” and al­most be­fore I could think he had got the sad­dle on my back and the bri­dle on my head. He just ran round for his coat, and then took me at a quick trot up to the hall door. The squire stood there, with a lamp in his hand.

“Now, John,” he said, “ride for your life — that is, for your mis­tress’ life; there is not a mo­ment to lose. Give this note to Dr. White; give your horse a rest at the inn, and be back as soon as you can.”

John said, “Yes, sir,” and was on my back in a minute. The gar­den­er who lived at the lodge had heard the bell ring, and was ready with the gate open, and away we went through the park, and through the vil­lage, and down the hill till we came to the toll-​gate. John called very loud and thumped up­on the door; the man was soon out and flung open the gate.

“Now,” said John, “do you keep the gate open for the doc­tor; here’s the mon­ey,” and off he went again.

There was be­fore us a long piece of lev­el road by the riv­er side; John said to me, “Now, Beau­ty, do your best,” and so I did; I want­ed no whip nor spur, and for two miles I gal­loped as fast as I could lay my feet to the ground; I don’t be­lieve that my old grand­fa­ther, who won the race at New­mar­ket, could have gone faster. When we came to the bridge John pulled me up a lit­tle and pat­ted my neck. “Well done, Beau­ty! good old fel­low,” he said. He would have let me go slow­er, but my spir­it was up, and I was off again as fast as be­fore. The air was frosty, the moon was bright; it was very pleas­ant. We came through a vil­lage, then through a dark wood, then up­hill, then down­hill, till af­ter eight miles’ run we came to the town, through the streets and in­to the mar­ket-​place. It was all quite still ex­cept the clat­ter of my feet on the stones — ev­ery­body was asleep. The church clock struck three as we drew up at Dr. White’s door. John rang the bell twice, and then knocked at the door like thun­der. A win­dow was thrown up, and Dr. White, in his night­cap, put his head out and said, “What do you want?”

“Mrs. Gor­don is very ill, sir; mas­ter wants you to go at once; he thinks she will die if you can­not get there. Here is a note.”

“Wait,” he said, “I will come.”

He shut the win­dow, and was soon at the door.

“The worst of it is,” he said, “that my horse has been out all day and is quite done up; my son has just been sent for, and he has tak­en the oth­er. What is to be done? Can I have your horse?”

“He has come at a gal­lop near­ly all the way, sir, and I was to give him a rest here; but I think my mas­ter would not be against it, if you think fit, sir.”

“All right,” he said; “I will soon be ready.”

John stood by me and stroked my neck; I was very hot. The doc­tor came out with his rid­ing-​whip.

“You need not take that, sir,” said John; “Black Beau­ty will go till he drops. Take care of him, sir, if you can; I should not like any harm to come to him.”

“No, no, John,” said the doc­tor, “I hope not,” and in a minute we had left John far be­hind.

I will not tell about our way back. The doc­tor was a heav­ier man than John, and not so good a rid­er; how­ev­er, I did my very best. The man at the toll-​gate had it open. When we came to the hill the doc­tor drew me up. “Now, my good fel­low,” he said, “take some breath.” I was glad he did, for I was near­ly spent, but that breath­ing helped me on, and soon we were in the park. Joe was at the lodge gate; my mas­ter was at the hall door, for he had heard us com­ing. He spoke not a word; the doc­tor went in­to the house with him, and Joe led me to the sta­ble. I was glad to get home; my legs shook un­der me, and I could on­ly stand and pant. I had not a dry hair on my body, the wa­ter ran down my legs, and I steamed all over, Joe used to say, like a pot on the fire. Poor Joe! he was young and small, and as yet he knew very lit­tle, and his fa­ther, who would have helped him, had been sent to the next vil­lage; but I am sure he did the very best he knew. He rubbed my legs and my chest, but he did not put my warm cloth on me; he thought I was so hot I should not like it. Then he gave me a pail­ful of wa­ter to drink; it was cold and very good, and I drank it all; then he gave me some hay and some corn, and think­ing he had done right, he went away. Soon I be­gan to shake and trem­ble, and turned dead­ly cold; my legs ached, my loins ached, and my chest ached, and I felt sore all over. Oh! how I wished for my warm, thick cloth, as I stood and trem­bled. I wished for John, but he had eight miles to walk, so I lay down in my straw and tried to go to sleep. Af­ter a long while I heard John at the door; I gave a low moan, for I was in great pain. He was at my side in a mo­ment, stoop­ing down by me. I could not tell him how I felt, but he seemed to know it all; he cov­ered me up with two or three warm cloths, and then ran to the house for some hot wa­ter; he made me some warm gru­el, which I drank, and then I think I went to sleep.

John seemed to be very much put out. I heard him say to him­self over and over again, “Stupid boy! stupid boy! no cloth put on, and I dare say the wa­ter was cold, too; boys are no good;” but Joe was a good boy, af­ter all.

I was now very ill; a strong in­flam­ma­tion had at­tacked my lungs, and I could not draw my breath with­out pain. John nursed me night and day; he would get up two or three times in the night to come to me. My mas­ter, too, of­ten came to see me. “My poor Beau­ty,” he said one day, “my good horse, you saved your mis­tress’ life, Beau­ty; yes, you saved her life.” I was very glad to hear that, for it seems the doc­tor had said if we had been a lit­tle longer it would have been too late. John told my mas­ter he nev­er saw a horse go so fast in his life. It seemed as if the horse knew what was the mat­ter. Of course I did, though John thought not; at least I knew as much as this — that John and I must go at the top of our speed, and that it was for the sake of the mis­tress.

19 On­ly Ig­no­rance

I do not know how long I was ill. Mr. Bond, the horse-​doc­tor, came ev­ery day. One day he bled me; John held a pail for the blood. I felt very faint af­ter it and thought I should die, and I be­lieve they all thought so too.

Gin­ger and Mer­rylegs had been moved in­to the oth­er sta­ble, so that I might be qui­et, for the fever made me very quick of hear­ing; any lit­tle noise seemed quite loud, and I could tell ev­ery one’s foot­step go­ing to and from the house. I knew all that was go­ing on. One night John had to give me a draught; Thomas Green came in to help him. Af­ter I had tak­en it and John had made me as com­fort­able as he could, he said he should stay half an hour to see how the medicine set­tled. Thomas said he would stay with him, so they went and sat down on a bench that had been brought in­to Mer­rylegs’ stall, and put down the lantern at their feet, that I might not be dis­turbed with the light.

For awhile both men sat silent, and then Tom Green said in a low voice:

“I wish, John, you’d say a bit of a kind word to Joe. The boy is quite bro­ken-​heart­ed; he can’t eat his meals, and he can’t smile. He says he knows it was all his fault, though he is sure he did the best he knew, and he says if Beau­ty dies no one will ev­er speak to him again. It goes to my heart to hear him. I think you might give him just a word; he is not a bad boy.”

Af­ter a short pause John said slow­ly, “You must not be too hard up­on me, Tom. I know he meant no harm, I nev­er said he did; I know he is not a bad boy. But you see, I am sore my­self; that horse is the pride of my heart, to say noth­ing of his be­ing such a fa­vorite with the mas­ter and mis­tress; and to think that his life may be flung away in this man­ner is more than I can bear. But if you think I am hard on the boy I will try to give him a good word to-​mor­row — that is, I mean if Beau­ty is bet­ter.”

“Well, John, thank you. I knew you did not wish to be too hard, and I am glad you see it was on­ly ig­no­rance.”

John’s voice al­most star­tled me as he an­swered:

“On­ly ig­no­rance! on­ly ig­no­rance! how can you talk about on­ly ig­no­rance? Don’t you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wicked­ness? — and which does the most mis­chief heav­en on­ly knows. If peo­ple can say, `Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,’ they think it is all right. I sup­pose Martha Mul­wash did not mean to kill that ba­by when she dosed it with Dal­by and sooth­ing syrups; but she did kill it, and was tried for manslaugh­ter.”

“And serve her right, too,” said Tom. “A wom­an should not un­der­take to nurse a ten­der lit­tle child with­out know­ing what is good and what is bad for it.”

“Bill Starkey,” con­tin­ued John, “did not mean to fright­en his broth­er in­to fits when he dressed up like a ghost and ran af­ter him in the moon­light; but he did; and that bright, hand­some lit­tle fel­low, that might have been the pride of any moth­er’s heart is just no bet­ter than an id­iot, and nev­er will be, if he lives to be eighty years old. You were a good deal cut up your­self, Tom, two weeks ago, when those young ladies left your hot­house door open, with a frosty east wind blow­ing right in; you said it killed a good many of your plants.”

“A good many!” said Tom; “there was not one of the ten­der cut­tings that was not nipped off. I shall have to strike all over again, and the worst of it is that I don’t know where to go to get fresh ones. I was near­ly mad when I came in and saw what was done.”

“And yet,” said John, “I am sure the young ladies did not mean it; it was on­ly ig­no­rance.”

I heard no more of this con­ver­sa­tion, for the medicine did well and sent me to sleep, and in the morn­ing I felt much bet­ter; but I of­ten thought of John’s words when I came to know more of the world.

20 Joe Green

Joe Green went on very well; he learned quick­ly, and was so at­ten­tive and care­ful that John be­gan to trust him in many things; but as I have said, he was small of his age, and it was sel­dom that he was al­lowed to ex­er­cise ei­ther Gin­ger or me; but it so hap­pened one morn­ing that John was out with Jus­tice in the lug­gage cart, and the mas­ter want­ed a note to be tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly to a gen­tle­man’s house, about three miles dis­tant, and sent his or­ders for Joe to sad­dle me and take it, adding the cau­tion that he was to ride steadi­ly.

The note was de­liv­ered, and we were qui­et­ly re­turn­ing when we came to the brick-​field. Here we saw a cart heav­ily laden with bricks; the wheels had stuck fast in the stiff mud of some deep ruts, and the carter was shout­ing and flog­ging the two hors­es un­mer­ci­ful­ly. Joe pulled up. It was a sad sight. There were the two hors­es strain­ing and strug­gling with all their might to drag the cart out, but they could not move it; the sweat streamed from their legs and flanks, their sides heaved, and ev­ery mus­cle was strained, while the man, fierce­ly pulling at the head of the fore horse, swore and lashed most bru­tal­ly.

“Hold hard,” said Joe; “don’t go on flog­ging the hors­es like that; the wheels are so stuck that they can­not move the cart.”

The man took no heed, but went on lash­ing.

“Stop! pray stop!” said Joe. “I’ll help you to light­en the cart; they can’t move it now.”

“Mind your own busi­ness, you im­pu­dent young ras­cal, and I’ll mind mine!” The man was in a tow­er­ing pas­sion and the worse for drink, and laid on the whip again. Joe turned my head, and the next mo­ment we were go­ing at a round gal­lop to­ward the house of the mas­ter brick-​mak­er. I can­not say if John would have ap­proved of our pace, but Joe and I were both of one mind, and so an­gry that we could not have gone slow­er.

The house stood close by the road­side. Joe knocked at the door, and shout­ed, “Hal­loo! Is Mr. Clay at home?” The door was opened, and Mr. Clay him­self came out.

“Hal­loo, young man! You seem in a hur­ry; any or­ders from the squire this morn­ing?”

“No, Mr. Clay, but there’s a fel­low in your brick-​yard flog­ging two hors­es to death. I told him to stop, and he wouldn’t; I said I’d help him to light­en the cart, and he wouldn’t; so I have come to tell you. Pray, sir, go.” Joe’s voice shook with ex­cite­ment.

“Thank ye, my lad,” said the man, run­ning in for his hat; then paus­ing for a mo­ment, “Will you give ev­idence of what you saw if I should bring the fel­low up be­fore a mag­is­trate?”

“That I will,” said Joe, “and glad too.” The man was gone, and we were on our way home at a smart trot.

“Why, what’s the mat­ter with you, Joe? You look an­gry all over,” said John, as the boy flung him­self from the sad­dle.

“I am an­gry all over, I can tell you,” said the boy, and then in hur­ried, ex­cit­ed words he told all that had hap­pened. Joe was usu­al­ly such a qui­et, gen­tle lit­tle fel­low that it was won­der­ful to see him so roused.

“Right, Joe! you did right, my boy, whether the fel­low gets a sum­mons or not. Many folks would have rid­den by and said it was not their busi­ness to in­ter­fere. Now I say that with cru­el­ty and op­pres­sion it is ev­ery­body’s busi­ness to in­ter­fere when they see it; you did right, my boy.”

Joe was quite calm by this time, and proud that John ap­proved of him, and cleaned out my feet and rubbed me down with a firmer hand than usu­al.

They were just go­ing home to din­ner when the foot­man came down to the sta­ble to say that Joe was want­ed di­rect­ly in mas­ter’s pri­vate room; there was a man brought up for ill-​us­ing hors­es, and Joe’s ev­idence was want­ed. The boy flushed up to his fore­head, and his eyes sparkled. “They shall have it,” said he.

“Put your­self a bit straight,” said John. Joe gave a pull at his neck­tie and a twitch at his jack­et, and was off in a mo­ment. Our mas­ter be­ing one of the coun­ty mag­is­trates, cas­es were of­ten brought to him to set­tle, or say what should be done. In the sta­ble we heard no more for some time, as it was the men’s din­ner hour, but when Joe came next in­to the sta­ble I saw he was in high spir­its; he gave me a good-​na­tured slap, and said, “We won’t see such things done, will we, old fel­low?” We heard af­ter­ward that he had giv­en his ev­idence so clear­ly, and the hors­es were in such an ex­haust­ed state, bear­ing marks of such bru­tal us­age, that the carter was com­mit­ted to take his tri­al, and might pos­si­bly be sen­tenced to two or three months in prison.

It was won­der­ful what a change had come over Joe. John laughed, and said he had grown an inch taller in that week, and I be­lieve he had. He was just as kind and gen­tle as be­fore, but there was more pur­pose and de­ter­mi­na­tion in all that he did — as if he had jumped at once from a boy in­to a man.

21 The Part­ing

Now I had lived in this hap­py place three years, but sad changes were about to come over us. We heard from time to time that our mis­tress was ill. The doc­tor was of­ten at the house, and the mas­ter looked grave and anx­ious. Then we heard that she must leave her home at once, and go to a warm coun­try for two or three years. The news fell up­on the house­hold like the tolling of a death­bell. Ev­ery­body was sor­ry; but the mas­ter be­gan di­rect­ly to make ar­range­ments for break­ing up his es­tab­lish­ment and leav­ing Eng­land. We used to hear it talked about in our sta­ble; in­deed, noth­ing else was talked about.

John went about his work silent and sad, and Joe scarce­ly whis­tled. There was a great deal of com­ing and go­ing; Gin­ger and I had full work.

The first of the par­ty who went were Miss Jessie and Flo­ra, with their gov­erness. They came to bid us good-​by. They hugged poor Mer­rylegs like an old friend, and so in­deed he was. Then we heard what had been ar­ranged for us. Mas­ter had sold Gin­ger and me to his old friend, the Earl of W—-, for he thought we should have a good place there. Mer­rylegs he had giv­en to the vicar, who was want­ing a pony for Mrs. Blome­field, but it was on the con­di­tion that he should nev­er be sold, and that when he was past work he should be shot and buried.

Joe was en­gaged to take care of him and to help in the house, so I thought that Mer­rylegs was well off. John had the of­fer of sev­er­al good places, but he said he should wait a lit­tle and look round.

The evening be­fore they left the mas­ter came in­to the sta­ble to give some di­rec­tions, and to give his hors­es the last pat. He seemed very low-​spir­it­ed; I knew that by his voice. I be­lieve we hors­es can tell more by the voice than many men can.

“Have you de­cid­ed what to do, John?” he said. “I find you have not ac­cept­ed ei­ther of those of­fers.”

“No, sir; I have made up my mind that if I could get a sit­ua­tion with some first-​rate colt-​break­er and horse-​train­er, it would be the right thing for me. Many young an­imals are fright­ened and spoiled by wrong treat­ment, which need not be if the right man took them in hand. I al­ways get on well with hors­es, and if I could help some of them to a fair start I should feel as if I was do­ing some good. What do you think of it, sir?”

“I don’t know a man any­where,” said mas­ter, “that I should think so suit­able for it as your­self. You un­der­stand hors­es, and some­how they un­der­stand you, and in time you might set up for your­self; I think you could not do bet­ter. If in any way I can help you, write to me. I shall speak to my agent in Lon­don, and leave your char­ac­ter with him.”

Mas­ter gave John the name and ad­dress, and then he thanked him for his long and faith­ful ser­vice; but that was too much for John. “Pray, don’t, sir, I can’t bear it; you and my dear mis­tress have done so much for me that I could nev­er re­pay it. But we shall nev­er for­get you, sir, and please God, we may some day see mis­tress back again like her­self; we must keep up hope, sir.” Mas­ter gave John his hand, but he did not speak, and they both left the sta­ble.

The last sad day had come; the foot­man and the heavy lug­gage had gone off the day be­fore, and there were on­ly mas­ter and mis­tress and her maid. Gin­ger and I brought the car­riage up to the hall door for the last time. The ser­vants brought out cush­ions and rugs and many oth­er things; and when all were ar­ranged mas­ter came down the steps car­ry­ing the mis­tress in his arms (I was on the side next to the house, and could see all that went on); he placed her care­ful­ly in the car­riage, while the house ser­vants stood round cry­ing.

“Good-​by, again,” he said; “we shall not for­get any of you,” and he got in. “Drive on, John.”

Joe jumped up, and we trot­ted slow­ly through the park and through the vil­lage, where the peo­ple were stand­ing at their doors to have a last look and to say, “God bless them.”

When we reached the rail­way sta­tion I think mis­tress walked from the car­riage to the wait­ing-​room. I heard her say in her own sweet voice, “Good-​by, John. God bless you.” I felt the rein twitch, but John made no an­swer; per­haps he could not speak. As soon as Joe had tak­en the things out of the car­riage John called him to stand by the hors­es, while he went on the plat­form. Poor Joe! he stood close up to our heads to hide his tears. Very soon the train came puff­ing up in­to the sta­tion; then two or three min­utes, and the doors were slammed to, the guard whis­tled, and the train glid­ed away, leav­ing be­hind it on­ly clouds of white smoke and some very heavy hearts.

When it was quite out of sight John came back.

“We shall nev­er see her again,” he said — “nev­er.” He took the reins, mount­ed the box, and with Joe drove slow­ly home; but it was not our home now.