For only answer the other squealed and whinnied, grimacing and kicking his legs up at the same time.  Then the horses advanced to them, and gathering round in a close crowd began touching Martin with their noses.  He liked it—­the softness of their sensitive skins, which were like velvet, and putting up his hands he began to stroke their noses.  Then one by one, after smelling him, and being touched by his hand, they turned away, and going down into the valley were soon scattered about, most of them grazing, some rolling, others lying stretched out on the grass as if to sleep; while the young foals in the troop, leaving their dams, began playing about and challenging one another to run a race.

Martin, following and watching them, almost wished that he too could go on four legs to join them in their games.  He trusted those wild horses, but he was still puzzled by that strange man, who had also left him now and was going quietly round on all fours, smelling at the grass.  By-and-by he found something to his liking in a small patch of tender green clover, which he began nosing and tearing it up with his teeth, then turning his head round he stared back at Martin, his jaws working vigorously all the time, the stems and leaves of the clover he was eating sticking out from his mouth and hanging about his beard.  All at once he jumped up, and flying back at Martin, snatched him up from the ground, carried him to the clover patch, and set him upon it, face down, on all fours; then when Martin sat up he grasped him by the head and forced it down until his nose was on the grass so as to make him smell it and know that it was good.  But smell it he would not, and finally the other seized him roughly again and, opening his mouth, forced a bunch of grass into it.

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“It’s grass, and I sha’n’t eat it!” screamed Martin, crying with anger at being so treated, and spewing the green stuff out of his mouth.

Then the man released him, and, withdrawing a space of two or three yards, sat down on his haunches, and, planting his bony elbows on his knees, thrust his great brown fingers in his tangled hair, and stared at Martin with his big yellow goat’s eyes for a long time.

Suddenly a wild excited look came into his eyes, and, leaping up with a shrill cry, which caused all the horses to look round at him, he once more snatched Martin up, and holding him firmly gripped to his ribby side by his arm, bounded off to where a mare was standing giving suck to her young foal.  With a vigorous kick he sent the foal away, and forced Martin to take his place, and, to make it easier for him, pressed the teat into his mouth.  Martin was not accustomed to feed in that way, and he not only refused to suck, but continued to cry with indignation at such treatment, and to struggle with all his little might to free himself.  His striving was all in vain; and by-and-by the man, seeing that he would not suck, had a fresh