merely gone. Never specially cherished while he tarried
with us, he had yet contrived to build himself a particular niche
of his own. Sunrise and sunset, and the dinner-bell, and the
sudden rainbow, and lessons, and Leotard, and the moon through
the nursery windows--they were all part of the great order of
things, and the displacement of any one item seemed to
disorganize the whole machinery. The immediate point was, not
that the world would continue to go round as of old, but that
Leotard wouldn't.

Yonder corner, now swept and garnished, had been the stall
wherein the spotty horse, at the close of each laborious day, was
accustomed to doze peacefully the long night through. In days of
old each of us in turn had been jerked thrillingly round the room
on his precarious back, had dug our heels into his unyielding
sides, and had scratched our hands on the tin tacks that
secured his mane to his stiffly-curving neck. Later, with
increasing stature, we came to overlook his merits as a beast of
burden; but how frankly, how good-naturedly, he had recognized
the new conditions, and adapted himself to them without a murmur!

When the military spirit was abroad, who so ready to be a
squadron of cavalry, a horde of Cossacks, or artillery pounding
into position? He had even served with honour as a gun-boat,
during a period when naval strategy was the only theme; and no
false equine pride ever hindered him from taking the part of a
roaring locomotive, earth-shaking, clangorous, annihilating time
and space. Really it was no longer clear how life, with its
manifold emergencies, was to be carried on at all without a
fellow like the spotty horse, ready to step in at critical