"The death-agony must have been upon her then," said William Peabody, shading his eyes with his hand.
"She remembered, perhaps, her young days," old Sylvester added, "when she used to crop the door-yard grass."
Mopsey, in her solicitude to have the death-bed of poor blind Sorrel properly attended, had brought with her, in the event of the paling or obscuration of the moon, a dark lantern, which she held tenderly aside as though the poor old creature still possessed her sight; immoveable herself as though she had been a swarthy image in stone, while, on the other side, William Peabody, near her head, stood gazing upon the animal with a fixed intensity, breathing hard and watching her dying struggle with a rigid steadiness of feature almost painful to behold.
"Has carried me to mill many a day," he said; "some pleasantest hours of my life spent upon her back, sauntering along at early day."
"Your mother rode her to meeting," Sylvester addressed his second son, "on your wedding-day, Oliver. Sorrel was of a long-lived race."
"She was the gentlest horse-creature you ever owned, father," added Mrs. Carrack, turning affectionately toward old Sylvester, "and humored us girls when we rode her as though she had been a blood-relation."
"I'm not so sure of that," Mr. Tiffany Carrack rejoined, "for she has dumped me in a ditch more than once."
"That was your own careless riding, Tiffany," said the Captain, "I don't believe she had the least ill-will towards any living creature, man or beast."
It was observed that whenever William Peabody spoke, blind Sorrel turned her feeble head in that direction, as if she recognised and singled out his voice from all the others.
"She knows your voice, father, even in her darkness," said the Captain, "as the sailor tells his old captain's step on deck at night."