"Skeer'd!" exclaimed the other; "why, that ain't no name for it—no name at all. But it was my mind that was skeered and not my eyes. You can't help seeing what's right at you, can you?"
This frankness took the edge off any criticism that George Gossett might have made, seeing which the young man gave loose reins to his invention, which was happy enough in this instance to fit the suggestions that fear had made a place for in the minds of his companions.
But it was all the simplest thing in the world. The apparition the fox hunters saw was Aaron and the Black Stallion. The Son of Ben Ali had decided that the interval between the first faint glimpse of dawn and daylight was the most convenient time to give Timoleon his exercise, and to fit him in some sort for the vigorous work he was expected to do some day on the race track. Aaron had hit upon that particular morning to begin the training of the Black Stallion, and had selected the pasture as the training-ground. It was purely a coincidence that he rode in at the double gates behind the fox hunters, but it was such a queer one that Little Crotchet laughed until the tears came into his eyes when he heard about it.
Aaron's version of the incident was so entirely different from that of the fox hunters that those who heard both would be unable to recognize in them an account of the same affair from different points of view. As Aaron saw it and knew it, the incident was as simple as it could be. As he was riding the horse along the lane leading to the double gates (having left Rambler behind at the stable), Timoleon gave a snort and lifted his head higher than usual.
"Son of Ben Ali," he said, "I smell strange men and strange horses. Their scent is hot on the air. Some of them are the men that went tumbling about the pasture the night you bade me play with them."
"Not at this hour, Grandson of Abdallah," replied Aaron.
"I am not smelling the hour, Son of Ben Ali, but the men. If we find them, shall I use my teeth?"
"We'll not see the men, Grandson of Abdallah. This is not their hour."
"But if we find them, Son of Ben Ali?" persisted the Black Stallion.