ce of her _riata_, had securely wound up two of my
neighbors to the tree, where they presented the appearance of early
Christian martyrs. When I released them, it appeared that they had been
attracted by Chu Chu's graces, and had offered her overtures of
affection, to which she had characteristically rotated with this
miserable result.

I led her, with some difficulty, warily keeping clear of the _riata_,
to the inclosure, from whose fence I had previously removed several
bars. Although the space was wide enough to have admitted a troop of
cavalry, she affected not to notice it and managed to kick away part of
another section on entering. She resisted the stable for some time, but
after carefully examining it with her hoofs and an affectedly meek
outstretching of her nose, she consented to recognize some oats in the
feed-box--without looking at them--and was formally installed. All this
while she had resolutely ignored my presence. As I stood watching her,
she suddenly stopped eating; the same reflective look came over her.
"Surely I am not mistaken, but that same obnoxious creature is
somewhere about here!" she seemed to say, and shivered at the
possibility.

It was probably this which made me confide my unreciprocated affection
to one of my neighbors--a man supposed to be an authority on horses,
and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu belonged. It was
he who, leaning over the edge of the stall where she was complacently
and, as usual, obliviously munching, absolutely dared to toy with a pet
lock of hair which she wore over the pretty star on her forehead. "Ye
see, captain," he said with jaunty easiness, "hosses is like wimmen; ye
don't want ter use any standoffishness or shyness with _them_; a stiddy
but keerless sort o' familiarity, a kind o' free but firm handlin',
jess like this, to let her see who's master----"

We never clearly knew _how_ it happened; but when I picked up my
neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall rail
and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and pockets,
Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way and was
contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other stall. My
neighbor spoke of damages while he was in the stall, and of physical
coercion when he was out of it again. But here Chu Chu, in some
marvelous way, righted herself, and my neighbor departed hurriedly with
a brimless hat and an unfinished sentence.

My next