A little remote from the others in body and spirit, Jerry, deep in philosophic doubt, was walking Lollypop up and down—­Lollypop, now a sage and rather superior veteran of seven; while on a mound hard by was Stanley on the pretty Make-Way-There.

The course was two miles round, running along the top of the hill over fences that looked stark and formidable in the gray.

“Strip him,” grunted Old Mat.

Albert and Monkey Brand went swiftly to work.

A great brown horse, gaunt and ugly as a mountain-goat, emerged.  His legs were like palings; his ears long and wide apart, and there was something immensely masculine about him.  He looked, with his great plain head, the embodiment of Work and Character:  a piece of old furniture designed for use and not for ornament, massive, many-cornered, and shining from centuries of work and wear.

That lean head of his, hollow above the eyes, and with a pendent upper lip, was so ugly as to be almost laughable; and his lazy and luminous eye looked out on the world with a drolling, almost satirical, air, as much as to say: 

“It’s all a great bore, but it might well be worse.”

“A thundering great hoss,” muttered Old Mat.  “I don’t know as ever I see his equal for power.  Cannibal stood as high, but he hadn’t the girth on him.  And Cannibal was a man-eatin’ mule, he was.  Savage you soon as look at you.  I never went into his loose-box without a pitchfork.  I seen him pull his jockey off by the toe of his boot afore now.  But him!—­he’s a Christian.  A child could go in to him and climb on to his back by way of his hind-leg.  Look at them ’ocks,” he continued in the low, musing voice of the mystic.  “Lift you over a house.  And a head on him like a pippopotamus.”

Jim Silver’s eyes followed the line of the horse’s quarters.

“He’s come on a lot since Christmas,” he remarked.  “He’s less ragged than he was.”

“You could hang your hat on him yet, though,” said the old man.  “Walk him round, Brand.”

The little jockey, now in the saddle, obeyed.

Four-Pound-the-Second shook his head and, blowing his nose, strode round with that wonderful swing from the hocks which made Mr. Haggard once say that the horse walked like a Highland regiment marching to the pipes.

“He’s on C springs,” said Mat, watching critically.  “See where he puts his hind-feet—­nigh a foot in front of the marks of his fore; and I don’t know as I knows a knowin’er hoss.  Look at that head-piece.  He’s all the while a-thinkin’, that hoss is.  That’s the way he’s bred.  If they’re much with human beings they picks up our tricks, same as dogs.  He’d take to drink, he would, only he ain’t got the cash.”

Boy had stripped off her long riding-coat and sat on the tall Silvertail, a slight figure in breeches and boots, her white shirt fluttering in the wind, her face calm and resolute.

Mat kicked his pony forward.