her "Fan" or "Beauty" or
"Lady," or some such regulation stable name.

Called by any name, she pleased us, and she _was_ patient. She trotted
peacefully up hill and down, she did her best at ploughing and haymaking
and all the odd jobs that the farm supplied. She stood when we left her,
with that same demure, almost overdone droop of the neck that I had first
noticed. When I met Jonathan at the station, she stood with her nose
against a snorting train, looking as if nothing could rouse her.

"Good little horse you got there," remarked the station agent. "Where'd
you find her?"

"Oh, I picked her out of a bunch down in the city," said Jonathan
casually. "I didn't think I knew much about horses, but I guess I was in
luck this time."

"Guess you know more about horses than you're sayin'." And Jonathan, thus
pressed, admitted with suitable reluctance that he _had_ now and then been
able to detect a good horse by his own observation.

On the way home he openly congratulated himself on his find. "I really
wasn't sure I knew how to pick out a horse," he remarked, in a glow of
retrospective modesty, "but I certainly got a treasure this time."

Griz had been with us about two weeks, and all went well. Then another
horse was needed for farm work, and one was sent up--one Kit by name--a big,
pleasant, rather stupid brown mare.

"They do say two mares don't git on so well together as a mare 'n a
horse," remarked Hiram.

"But these are both such quiet creatures," I protested, to which Hiram
made no answer. Hiram seldom made an answer unless fairly cornered into
it.

For two or three days after the new arrival nothing happened, so far as we
knew, except that Griz always laid her ears back, and looked queer about
her under lip, whenever Kit was led in or out of the stall next her, while
Kit always huddled up close to her manger whenever Griz was led past her
heels. Once or twice Griz slipped her halter in the stall, and Hiram said
there was a place on Kit that looked as if she had been kicked, but when
we scrutinized Griz, neck a-droop and eyes a-blink, we found it hard to
think ill of her. Besides, Jonathan was now fairly committed to the
opinion that he had "got a treasure this time." "Kit may have hurt herself
lying down," he suggested, and again Hiram made no answer.

Then one night, sometime during the very small, very dark, and very sleepy
hours, we were awakened by awful sounds. "What is it? What _is_ it?" I
gasped.