and paramount owner; with everybody to thank him kindly for
accepting tribute.

For the present, however, I learned nothing more as to what our cousin's
profession was; only that mother seemed frightened, and whispered to
him now and then not to talk of something, because of the children being
there; whereupon he always nodded with a sage expression, and applied
himself to hollands.

"Now let us go and see Winnie, Jack," he said to me after supper; "for
the most part I feed her before myself; but she was so hot from the
way you drove her. Now she must be grieving for me, and I never let her
grieve long."

I was too glad to go with him, and Annie came slyly after us. The filly
was walking to and fro on the naked floor of the stable (for he would
not let her have any straw, until he should make a bed for her), and
without so much as a headstall on, for he would not have her fastened.
"Do you take my mare for a dog?" he had said when John Fry brought him a
halter. And now she ran to him like a child, and her great eyes shone at
the lanthorn.

"Hit me, Jack, and see what she will do. I will not let her hurt thee."
He was rubbing her ears all the time he spoke, and she was leaning
against him. Then I made believe to strike him, and in a moment she
caught me by the waistband, and lifted me clean from the ground, and was
casting me down to trample upon me, when he stopped her suddenly.

"What think you of that, boy? Have you horse or dog that would do that
for you? Ay, and more than that she will do. If I were to whistle,
by-and-by, in the tone that tells my danger, she would break this
stable-door down, and rush into the room to me. Nothing will keep her
from me then, stone-wall or church-tower. Ah, Winnie, Winnie, you little
witch, we shall die together."

Then he turned away with a joke, and began to feed her nicely, for she
was very dainty. Not a husk of oat would she touch that had been under
the breath of another horse, however hungry she might be. And with her
oats he mixed some powder, fetching it from his saddle-bags. What this
was I could not guess, neither would he tell me, but laughed and called
it "star-shavings." He watched her eat every morsel of it, with two or
three drinks of pure water, ministered between whiles; and then he made
her bed in a form I had never seen before, and so we said "Good-night"
to her.

Afterwards by the fireside he kept us very merry, sitting in the great
chimney-corner, and ma