"Who won the last race?" inquired the boy as though he had been absent ten minutes.
Now out of the silence of the rainy September night and out of the thoughtfulness of the fire, the imperious splendid dark glowing young animal steaming in his boots and flannel suddenly looked across and spoke:—
"If I am ever going to do anything, it is about time I began."
The philosopher on the other side of the fire grew wary; he had given the blood time, and now the blood was mounting to the brain.
"It is time, if you think it is time."
"One thing I am not going to do," said the arbiter of his fate, as if he were drawing a surprise from the depths of his nature and were offering it to his uncle; if possible, without discourtesy, but certainly without discussion—"one thing I am not going to do; I am not going to breed horses."
The fire crackled, and no other sound disturbed the stillness.
"Some one else will breed them," replied the vicar of the stables, with quietness: the sun always seemed to remain on his face after it had gone down. "They will be bred by some one else. The breeding of horses in the world will not be stopped because some one does not wish to breed them. It will come to the same thing in the end. Even if it does not come to the same thing, it will come to something different. No matter, either way."
The young hunter had unbuttoned one of his shirt sleeves and bared his arm above the elbow; and he now stroked his forearm as he bent it backward over the biceps and suddenly struck out at the air as though he would knock the head off of an idea.
"My notion is this: I don't want to stand still and let my horse do the running. If I have a horse, I want it to stand still and let me do the running. If there is any excitement for either of us, I want the excitement. I don't care to own an animal that wins a race: I want to be the animal that wins a race."