"A NEGRO GROOM WAS HOLDING A BIG BAY HORSE, ABOUT WHICH FALKNER WAS BUSILY WORKING"
"Nivver mind, Tim," she would say, lifting her bent back from the tub in the corner of the kitchen, "soon you'll be the famous jockey wid thousands a year. Thin it's your ould mother that'll be wearin' the fine duds and wurruk no more."
And then the boy, sick with shame and fear, would steal from the house—anywhere to be out of the sight of her and the sound of her voice.
Sometimes the Terror would grip him in his sleep, in the middle of the winter night, when the wind shrieked under the shingles on the cabin roof or the cold rain drove against the window-pane. More than once he started up, broad awake, with the smell of sweating horseflesh sharp and agonizing in his nostrils. Once it was the sound of his own voice that woke him, and he was crying out:
"Come on, yew baby, come, come, yew gal!"
Then he sat on the edge of his cot, with the blanket over his shoulders, until daybreak, with such thoughts as a boy may know.
But on a sunny morning in February, it was Tim who stood in the great doorway of the stallion stable at The Vale, saying to the Colonel:
"Thought mebbe I could help yew with the two-year-olds."
Day by day he strove with himself. Little by little he fought the Terror down. The very smell of the stables turned him faint for a week. He used to creep into King Faraway's box-stall when the big horse stood, wet under his blanket, after his morning gallop, and bury his face in the stallion's mane and rub his nose along the giant withers, till at last the horrible smell of sweating horseflesh had power to terrify him no more. It was weeks before he could mount without trembling, but at last he came to do it and—to hope.
At last came April, and one evening, as Tim was helping with the feeding, he heard the Colonel's voice calling him. He trembled a little, for he knew what was coming.