rds the sea.

We had sat silent for some time, too lazy to speak, almost to think.
The beautiful flower-garden which lay before us, sloping towards the
river, looked rather brown and sere, after the hot winds, although the
orange-trees were still green enough, and vast clusters of purple
grapes were ripening rapidly among the yellowing vine-leaves. On the
whole, however, the garden was but a poor subject of contemplation for
one who remembered it in all its full November beauty, and so my eye
travelled away to the left, to a broad paddock of yellow grass which
bounded the garden on that side, and there I watched an old horse
feeding.

A very old horse indeed, a horse which seemed to have reached the
utmost bounds of equine existence. And yet such a beautiful beast. Even
as I looked some wild young colts were let out of the stockyard, and
came galloping and whinnying towards him, and then it was a sight to
see the old fellow as he trotted towards them, with his nose in the
air, and his tail arched, throwing his legs out before him with the
ease and grace of a four-year-old, and making me regret that he wasn't
my property and ten years younger;--altogether, even then, one of the
finest horses of his class I had ever seen, and suddenly a thought came
over me, and I grew animated.

"Major Buckley," I said, "what horse is that?"

"What horse is that?" repeated the major very slowly. "Why, my good
fellow, old Widderin, to be sure."

"Bless me!" I said; "You don't mean to say that that old horse is alive
still?"

"He looks like it," said the major. "He'd carry you a mile or two, yet."

"I thought he had died while I was in England," I said. "Ah, major,
that horse's history would be worth writing."

"If you began," answered the major, "to write the history of the horse,
you must write also the history of every body who was concerned in
those circumstances which caused Sam to take a certain famous ride upon
him. And you would find that the history of the horse would be reduced
into very small compass, and that the rest of your book would assume
proportions too vast for the human intellect to grasp."

"How so?" I said.

He entered into certain details, which I will not give. "You would
have," he said, "to begin at the end of the last century, and bring one
gradually on to the present time. Good heavens! just consider."

"I think you exaggerate," I said.

"Not at all," he answered. "You must begin the histories of t