knowledge of the race acquired from books. Artists and poets: they were
all alike--dirty beggars, all manners and no morals, who could talk the
hind-leg off a she-ass.

And Silver, being dumb himself and very human, hated men who were
articulate.

He watched the pair walking away from him down the hillside. An
ill-matched couple they seemed to him: the slight, strenuous girl, her
plait of hair like a spear of gold between her shoulders, her slim black
legs, and air of a cold flame; and that loose, fat thing who gave the
young man the impression of a suet pudding that had taken to drink.

The beast seemed disgustingly fatherly, too, rubbing shoulders with the
girl, and fawning on her.

Silver sat down on a log and took out the cigarette-case, which was his
habitual comforter.

The old mare grazed beside him in the dusk, and he began to laugh as he
looked at her. Her laziness tickled and appealed to him. There was
something great about it. She was indolent as was Nature, and for the
same reason--that she was aware of immense reserves of power on which
she could fall back at any moment.

A rabbit came out of the gorse to feed near by. The owl whooped and
swooped and hovered behind her. The sea wind, fresh and crisp, came
blowing up the valley; and the young stock, bursting with the ecstasy of
life, thundered by in the dusk with downward heads and arched backs and
far-flung heels.