straight hocks, a small head, and what is known as a rat-tail. But of
all his features, the most remarkable was his eye. In the depths of
that full, soft eye was an almost uncanny gleam, and when he turned
it, half-circled by a moon of white, and gave bystanders that look of
strange comprehension, they felt that he saw to the bottom of all this
that was going on around him. He was still but three years old, and
had not yet attained the age when people apply to action the fruits of
understanding; yet there was little doubt that as he advanced in years
he would manifest his disapproval of a system whereby men made money
at his expense. And with that eye half-circled by the moon he looked at
George, and in silence George looked back at him, strangely baffled by
the horse's long, soft, wild gaze. On this heart beating deep within its
warm, dark satin sheath, on the spirit gazing through that soft, wild
eye, too much was hanging, and he turned away.

"Mount, jockeys!"

Through the crowd of hard-looking, hatted, muffled, two-legged men,
those four-legged creatures in their chestnut, bay, and brown, and
satin nakedness, most beautiful in all the world, filed proudly past,
as though going forth to death. The last vanished through the gate, the
crowd dispersed.

Down by the rails of Tattersall's George stood alone. He had screwed
himself into a corner, whence he could watch through his long glasses
that gay-coloured, shifting wheel at the end of the mile and more of
turf. At this moment, so pregnant with the future, he could not bear the
company of his fellows.

"They're off!"