bait, winked at one another, and began to look at me in
a more friendly way--the landlord foremost. But when I had led them so
far, I dared go no farther, lest I should commit myself and be found
out. I stopped, therefore, and, harking back to general subjects,
chanced to compare my province with theirs. The landlord, now become
almost talkative, was not slow to take up this challenge; and it
presently led to my acquiring a curious piece of knowledge. He was
boasting of his great snow mountains, the forests that propped them, the
bears that roamed in them, the izards that loved the ice, and the boars
that fed on the oak mast.

'Well,' I said, quite by chance, 'we have not these things, it is true.
But we have things in the north you have not. We have tens of thousands
of good horses--not such ponies as you breed here. At the horse fair at
Fecamp my sorrel would be lost in the crowd. Here in the south you will
not meet his match in a long day's journey.'

'Do not make too sure of that,' the man replied, his eyes bright with
triumph and the dram. 'What would you say if I showed you a better--in
my own stable?'

I saw that his words sent a kind of thrill through his other hearers,
and that such of them as understood for two or three of them talked
their PATOIS only--looked at him angrily; and in a twinkling I began to
comprehend. But I affected dullness, and laughed in scorn.

'Seeing is believing,' I said. 'I doubt if you knows good horse when you
see one, my friend.'

'Oh, don't I?' he said, winking. 'Indeed!'

'I doubt it,' I answered stubbornly.

'Then come with me, and I will show you one,' he retorted, discretion
giving way to vain-glory. His wife and the others, I saw, looked at him
dumbfounded; but, without paying any heed to them, he rose, took up
a lanthorn, and, assuming an air of peculiar wisdom, opened the door.
'Come with me,' he continued. 'I don't know a good horse when I see one,
don't I? I know a better than yours, at any rate!'

I should not have been surprised if the other men had interfered; but
I suppose he was a leader among them, they did not, and in a moment we
were outside. Three paces through the darkness took us to the stable, an
offset at the back of the inn. My man twirled the pin, and, leading the
way in, raised his lanthorn. A horse whinnied softly, and turned its
bright, mild eyes on us--a baldfaced chestnut, with white hairs in its
tail and one white stocking.

'There!' my guid