r wisdom; simply her power of making
me a better man. A selfish criterion, you will say. Be it so.... What a
noble horse that is of yours!'

'He has been--he has been; but worn out now, like his master and his
master's fortunes....'

'Not so, certainly, the colt on which you have done me the honour to
mount me.'

'Ah, my poor boy's pet!.... You are the first person who has crossed him
since--'

'Is he of your own breeding?' asked Raphael, trying to turn the
conversation.

'A cross between that white Nisaean which you sent me, and one of my own
mares.'

'Not a bad cross; though he keeps a little of the bull head and
greyhound flank of your Africans.'

'So much the better, friend. Give me bone--bone and endurance for this
rough down country. Your delicate Nisaeans are all very well for a few
minutes over those flat sands of Egypt: but here you need a horse who
will go forty miles a day over rough and smooth, and dine thankfully off
thistles at night. Aha, poor little man!'--as a jerboa sprang up from
a tuft of bushes at his feet--'I fear you must help to fill our
soup-kettle in these hard times.'

And with a dexterous sweep of his long whip, the worthy bishop entangled
the jerboas long legs, whisked him up to his saddle-bow, and delivered
him to the groom and the game-bag.

'Kill him at once. Don't let him squeak, boy!--he cries too like a
child....'

'Poor little wretch!' said Raphael. 'What more right, now, have we to
eat him than he to eat us?'

'Eh? If he can eat us, let him try. How long have you joined the
Manichees?'

'Have no fears on that score. But, as I told you, since my wonderful
conversion by Bran, the dog, I have begun to hold dumb animals in
respect, as probably quite as good as myself.'

'Then you need a further conversion, friend Raphael, and to learn what
is the dignity of man; and when that arrives, you will learn to believe,
with me, that the life of every beast upon the face of the earth would
be a cheap price to pay in exchange for the life of the meanest human
being.'

'Yes, if they be required for food: but really, to kill them for our
amusement!'

'Friend, when I was still a heathen, I recollect well how I used to
haggle at that story of the cursing of the fig-tree; but when I learnt
to know what man was, and that I had been all my life mistaking for a
part of nature that race which was originally, and can be again, made
in the likeness of God, then I began to see that it w