Presently the first voice said:
"It seems strange enough to be counted old and only fit to be banged around without this dreadful sightlessness."
She paused again, and I ventured to ask the cause of her misfortune.
"It is inherited. My mother was blind and not of much use but to raise colts, they said. Whether they knew that blind mothers are liable to transmit their misfortune or not I do not know; but the fact remains. I could see all right until I was four years old; when one day, getting pretty warm, a mist seemed to come before my eyes. It remained growing steadily more dense, until at night I was entirely guided by my mate, and when loosened from him could not even find the familiar watering trough.
"'What ails Kate?' somebody asked, while some one else added, 'She acts blind.'
"Presently my master examined my eyes and gave it as his opinion that I was stone blind, and I was and have been ever since.
"No words can describe what I suffer. No one has a thought of pity for a blind horse; it is just rush them along! I am so much afraid; everything startles and terrifies me; I am always stepping on stones or bruising myself on stumps and things that I cannot see. I stretch my neck out long to listen, and I am jerked and called an old blind fool!
"It hurts my feelings, too; it is so dreadful to be afflicted and then be taunted with it and scolded about it. Nearly all my brothers and sisters went blind in the same way."
We Wallace horses longed for a barn of our own, where we could have our little family visits once more, and where we should not see and hear so many harrowing things.
Topsy was growing a fine, little animal, but between Chet and Park she was bound to be ruined. These two were never friends, and the latter was, besides, jealous of the young owner. He tried a variety of means to make her nervous and unmanageable, always picking at and tormenting her. He had her so that she would both kick and bite.