before he could leave the scene of his disastrous fortunes. Under such
circumstances it was that Dick Tubman ran across the horse and, partly
out of pity for its owner and partly out of admiration of the horse,
whose failure to win at the races was due more to his lack of condition
and the bad management of his jockey than lack of speed, bought him
off-hand and, having no use for him himself, shipped him as a present to
the deacon, with whom he had now been for four years, with no harder
work than plowing out the good old man's corn in the summer, and jogging
along the country roads on the deacon's errands. Having said this much
of the horse, perhaps I should more particularly describe him.

[Illustration: "_Old Jack was a horse of a great deal of character._"]

He was, in sooth, an animal of most unique and extraordinary appearance.
For, in the first place, he was quite seventeen hands in height and long
in proportion. He was also the reverse of shapely in the fashion of his
build, for his head was long and bony and his hip bones sharp and
protuberant; his tail was what is known among horsemen as a "rat tail,"
being but scantily covered with hair, and his neck was even more
scantily supplied with a mane; while in color he could easily have taken
any premium put up for homeliness, being an ashen roan, mottled with
black and patches of divers hue. But his legs were flat and corded like
a racer's, his neck long and thin as a thoroughbred's, his nostrils
large, his ears sharply pointed and lively, while the white rings around
his eyes hinted at a cross, somewhere in his pedigree, with Arabian
blood. A huge, bony, homely-looking horse he was as he drew the deacon
and Miranda into the village on market days and Sundays, with a loose,
shambling gait, making altogether an appearance so homely and peculiar
that the smart village chaps, riding along in their jaunty turn-outs,
used to chaff the good deacon on the character of the steed, and