She wanted him to go to school. She wanted him to learn. She had the
notion that he might become something better, something higher than
she had been. But for him school had no charms; his school was the
cool stalls in the big livery stable near at hand; the arena of his
pursuits its sawdust floor; the height of his ambition, to be a
horseman. Either here or in the racing stables at the Fair-grounds he
spent his truant hours. It was a school that taught much, and Patsy
was as apt a pupil as he was a constant attendant. He learned strange
things about horses, and fine, sonorous oaths that sounded eerie on
his young lips, for he had only turned into his fourteenth year.

A man goes where he is appreciated; then could this slim black boy be
blamed for doing the same thing? He was a great favorite with the
horsemen, and picked up many a dime or nickel for dancing or singing,
or even a quarter for warming up a horse for its owner. He was not to
be blamed for this, for, first of all, he was born in Kentucky, and
had spent the very days of his infancy about the paddocks near
Lexington, where his father had sacrificed his life on account of his
love for horses. The little fellow had shed no tears when he looked at
his father's bleeding body, bruised and broken by the fiery young
two-year-old he was trying to subdue. Patsy did not sob or whimper,
though his heart ached, for over all the feeling of his grief was a
mad, burning desire to ride that horse.

His tears were shed, however, when, actuated by the idea that times
would be easier up North, they moved to Dalesford. Then, when he
learned that he must leave his old friends, the horses and their
masters, whom he had known, he wept. The comparatively meagre
appointments of the Fair-grounds at Dalesford proved a poor
compensation for all these. For the first few weeks Patsy had dreams