you not, Mr. Vane?" said the raven, alighting on a
stone. "You must make acquaintance with the horse that will carry you in
the morning!"

He gave a strange whistle through his long black beak. A spot appeared
on the face of the half-risen moon. To my ears came presently the
drumming of swift, soft-galloping hoofs, and in a minute or two, out of
the very disc of the moon, low-thundered the terrible horse. His mane
flowed away behind him like the crest of a wind-fighting wave, torn
seaward in hoary spray, and the whisk of his tail kept blinding the eye
of the moon. Nineteen hands he seemed, huge of bone, tight of skin, hard
of muscle--a steed the holy Death himself might choose on which to ride
abroad and slay! The moon seemed to regard him with awe; in her scary
light he looked a very skeleton, loosely roped together. Terrifically
large, he moved with the lightness of a winged insect. As he drew near,
his speed slackened, and his mane and tail drifted about him settling.

Now I was not merely a lover of horses, but I loved every horse I saw.
I had never spent money except upon horses, and had never sold a horse.
The sight of this mighty one, terrible to look at, woke in me longing to
possess him. It was pure greed, nay, rank covetousness, an evil thing
in all the worlds. I do not mean that I could have stolen him, but that,
regardless of his proper place, I would have bought him if I could. I
laid my hands on him, and stroked the protuberant bones that humped a
hide smooth and thin, and shiny as satin--so shiny that the very shape
of the moon was reflected in it; I fondled his sharp-pointed ears,
whispered words in them, and breathed into his red nostrils the breath
of a man's life. He in return breathed into mine the breath of a horse's
life, and we loved one another. What eyes he had! Blue-filmy like the
eyes of the dead, behind each was a glowing coal! The raven, with wings
half extended, looked on pleased at my love-making to his magnificent
horse.

"That is well! be friends with him," he said: "he will carry you all the
better to-morrow!--Now we must hurry home!"

My desire to ride the horse had grown passionate.

"May I not mount him at once, Mr. Raven?" I cried.

"By all means!" he answered. "Mount, and ride him home."

The horse bent his head over my shoulder lovingly. I twisted my hands
in his mane and scrambled onto his back, not without aid from certain
protuberant bones.

"He would outspeed any leo