128 The Trotter. 



by the shoulder, and worried him as a terrier would a cat. The 

 groom, who was luckily in the stable, hearing the boy scream, 

 rushed to his help, and it was just in time, for she had got the lad 

 down, and was kneeling on him. The groom afterwards said he 

 never in his whole life saw such a picture of savage rage as she then 

 presented. However, strange to say, directly he halloed to her, her 

 passion seemed to subside in an instant. She rose from the boy, 

 and the groom dragged the lad out with a shoulder not only broken, 

 but literally crushed. This was a warning to us all. She had far 

 more the manners of a dog than a horse, and soon got to know me 

 so well that I believe she would have followed me anywhere, espe- 

 cially if I carried an apple in my hand or pocket. 



The reader must not think that during my first two months' 

 possession of that mare my bed was a bed of roses. I felt like one 

 who is in possession of a momentous secret, which a slip of his 

 tongue may reveal at any moment. One great object was to keep 

 this mare as dark as possible till the proper moment, and this was no 

 easy task. By some means or other it got whispered about that a 

 new trotter had come home to our stable, and my parting with the 

 cob just at the time looked very suspicious. Miss Morgan's early 

 habits of life had not been those of idleness, and she required a 

 deal more exercise to keep her from breaking out than our other 

 horses. She had, I believe, never looked through a collar in her 

 life, but this did not seem to make a pin's head difference to her. 

 The first time we put her into a dung-cart to try, she walked away 

 with it like the steadiest old team-horse on the farm, and after her 

 first lesson in harness gave us no further trouble. I took a contract 

 to lead gravel from a pit, about two miles off, on to the turnpike- 

 road j and often and often, when she has been standing quietly by 

 the side of the gravel-pit all her best points hidden by blinkers, collar, 

 and breeching looking as rough arid dirty as the men who were 

 shovelling in the gravel, have passers-by members of " the prying, 

 inquisitive clan" pulled up, attracted by the name on the cart, 

 and tried, by pumping the labourers, to see if they could not glean 

 a little information about the new trotter, which so many had heard 



