82 THE HORSE SPIRITUAL 



Shall we say, then, that the wolf is the more 

 religious, or the horse not quite so respectable ? 



A certain Sergeant Parker, of the North- 

 west Mounted PoUce, went on patrol with a 

 saddle horse. They got lost in a blizzard, and 

 in the succeeding calm the man became snow- 

 blind. On the seventh day, the horse saw an 

 outfit of freighters passing in the distance. He 

 ran to their sleighs. He whinneyed to the 

 horses, who understood his talk, and he 

 beckoned to the men, who were not so clever. 

 Then the men noticed that his belly was terribly 

 swollen by long pressure of the girth. They 

 followed him. At a distance of one and a half 

 miles they came to a tract of prairie with the 

 snow grubbed up where the horse had been 

 scratching for grass. In the midst was a heap 

 of snow like the mound of a grave, on which 

 lay Sergeant Parker in seeming death. His 

 long delirium, beginning with visions of angels 

 and closing with a dream of meat-pies, had 

 ended in coma just at the verge of death ; 

 while the horse stayed on guard until it was 

 possible to get him rescued. So much was 

 told me afterwards by the man. 



The other day in France a British soldier 

 was killed, whose horse remained with the 

 body for two days, out in the zone between the 



