"Are you fit to die?" asked the old man, sitting down by his side. "Would you enter the tomb through a boiling gulf of passion?"
Mark started up.
"Ches is to blame!" he said, with an oath. "He provoked me, when I was mad from losing my colt's eye."
"Be calm, my friend. Sit down," replied the clergyman. "If Chester has done wrong, he will acknowledge it."
"I spoke what I thought just and true," added the young man, promptly.
"Why just and true?" echoed Mark, his passion blazing up again.
"You will be angry, if I tell you."
"No, I won't."
"Then I will speak plainly. I said you deserved to lose the beauty and value of your colt. Perhaps I was wrong. But I did not believe his eye was hurt by any such accident as you described."
"How then?" muttered the jockey.