to the speaker and the superior
of everyone else with a unanimity which had its precedent only after
Salamis.
Robin had been head of Colonel Theodoric Johnston's stable before the
war, the time on which his mind dwelt with tender memory; and this,
with the consideration with which he was treated by stable-owners
and racing-gentlemen who shone like luminaries on the far edge of the
stable-boys' horizon, and the old man's undoubted knowledge of a horse,
made him an authority in that world.
The Bullfield stable had produced some of the greatest horses of the
country--horses to which the most ignorant stable-biped knew the great
winners of the present traced back their descent or were close akin--and
if Colonel Johnston's stable lost anything of prestige, it was not in
Robin's telling of it. He was at it now as he stood at the big white
gate, gazing up the road, over which hung a haze of dust. Deucalion, Old
Nina, Plan-
et, Fanny Washington, and the whole gleaming array of fliers
went by in Robin's illumined speech, mixed up with Revenue, Boston,
Timoleon, Sir Archy and a dozen others in a blaze of equine splendor.
"Aw, what 're you giffin us!" jeered a dusky young mulatto, clad in a
ragged striped sweater, recently discharged as a stable-boy. "What wus
the time then? Why 'n't you read the book?"
This was a dig at Robin, for he was "no great hand at reading," and the
crowd knew it and laughed. The old man turned on the speaker.
"Races now ain't no mo' than quarter-dashes. Let 'em try 'em in fo'-mile
heats if they want to see what 's in a hoss. Dat 's the test o' wind
an' bottom. _Our_ hosses used to run fo'-mile heats from New York to New
Orleans, an' come in with their heads up high enough to look over dis
gate."
"Why 'n't you read the books?" persisted the other, facing him.
"I can't read not much better than you ken _ride_,"-