THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 421 
together a sort of higher individuality that drew the popular gaze as 
they flashed by. It seemed as if they were whipping the whole neigh¬ 
borhood up to a more rapid tempo. The farmers came to be men of 
honor so far as their horses were concerned, fed them well, and groomed 
them with the utmost care. They drove at a brisker pace along the 
roads, their speech acquired an added dash of humor, they laughed in 
the face of heaven and earth, their thoughts assumed a new boldness. 
On Sundays, as the congregation stood outside the church admiring 
Skobelef and Peter Lo, a fresh source of vitality seemed to be mani¬ 
festing itself; men saw with their own eyes the very embodiment of 
animal spirits, they sensed something venerable in brute strength, they 
caught the chanted praise of rippling muscles. It began to dawn on 
them that life is not a mere medley of sins and sorrows, that life on 
earth has a glory of its own. 
As time passed, Peter Lo gave increasing attention to his clothes. 
He took to reading books, to wearing a white collar, to using a hand¬ 
kerchief when he blew his nose about the precincts of the church. He 
imitated the sheriff’s mannerisms of speech. He knew quite well that 
he and Skobelef had become the local cynosures; and this persuasion 
lent him a feeling of responsibility and a desire to serve as a pattern for 
the herd. If the truth must be told, it was not only we boys who prayed, 
“Good Lord, help us to be like Peter Lo when we get big!” By no 
means! The grownups, too, tried to ape his manner. “You are brush- 
ing your shoes just the way Peter Lo does,” one man would say to 
another. “And you are wearing a white collar just like Peter Lo’s,” 
they would say. Skobelef, imported to ennoble the rural breed of 
horse flesh, had become a spiritual force, an educational institution for 
the entire countryside. 
Peter Lo was not quite so fortunate. He could not be happy 
except in the society of the stallion. He lost interest in work. He was 
in his element only when racing down the county roads behind his crony, 
or when he and Skobelef together conducted revival services beneath 
the very walls of the church. The rumor spread that he had taken to 
sleeping in the stable. Gossip would have it that horse and man were 
coming to resemble each other. Skobelef smiled out of the corner of 
his mouth when he met with his affinities, and Peter Lo greeted good 
friends at church with something like a whinny in his voice. 
Peter Lo’s lot was not altogether enviable. He had a fondness 
for all things pretty, not excepting those that belonged to his neighbors. 
And when he got into an unusually bad scrape, he made a most pathetic 
figure. Then he would go to church and take holy communion. Many 
a time we saw him come driving, not the wild stallion but an old mare. 
His sour-visaged wife, wrapped in her shawl, would be sitting in the 
cart, at one side of which walked the sexton, and at the other side Peter 
Lo, with bowed head. On such a day he would have his mind made up 
