"Horses don't sense sech things ez we would," said another.
"Don't ye fool yerself, Billy, they do. I raised a fine colt onct, kept her till she was nine years old, then sold her to a man twenty miles away. He came for her, 'nd when he went to take her she seemed to know she wasn't jist lent or hired, and such mournful whinnying I never heard before nor since. She was always such a willing creature, but then she pulled back and all but balked. My, how the children cried 'nd took on! I felt myself as if I'd committed a crime. Well, do you think when I got up in the morning that creature was back in her old stall, tired and muddy, but jest as happy! She had traveled the forty miles and was home again.
"The next day the man came again. She resisted and plead harder than ever, but of course he took her. He shut her in safely that time. Six months after he was driving by our place when she set up sech a neighing, and, despite his best efforts, she turned in at the gate. I went out and she acted so tickled. I persuaded him to stop to dinner, and I assure you she was bountifully cared for in her old stall.
"She again left reluctantly. Three or four months later, she got out of her pasture and came home. Five years after she came again; and the queerest thing was, she hadn't forgotten us a bit. It always makes me blue to think what she had suffered from pure homesickness in those years."
"That 'minds me," said another man, "of a big gray horse my daughter used to own. She sold sewing machines, and drove the animal nearly every day for two or three years; then she sold him.
"It was, maybe, two years after that, that she was crossing a pasture one day, when she saw a big gray horse making swiftly towards her. It scared her a bit at first, but when he neighed she knew it was old Jim. Would you believe he came straight to her, and laid his head on her shoulder? If that ain't memory and affection for ye, what is it?"
"Yes, 'nd the wonder is that folks ain't better to 'em than they be. They get mighty rough used some times. I knew a man down East; he purtended to be a sort of a preacher, too, that used to pound his horses fer just what was his own fault. One day he overloaded 'em, 'nd because they couldn't pull up a steep place he got back of 'em 'nd jabbed 'em with the tines o' a pitchfork till the blood jest trickled down. At another time he got mad at one of 'em, 'nd, taking her out of the harness, beat her till he knocked her down, then he hitched the other horse to her and made him drag her all over a stony, rough pasture. When the neighbors see him, the trail her body made was marked with blood. There was a fuss, but he let 'em know he'd do as he pleased with his own. Her side was all tore to pieces, 'nd, after sufferin' a while, she died."
"I see a fellow jest last week," put in another, "knock his horse down; then, because she couldn't get up, he kicked an eye out."
"Mercy on us!" cried the first speaker, "if I thought them 'ere black ponies of mine would ever fall into such hands, I'd take 'em home 'nd let the blamed mortgage foreclose."
"There's no tellin'," answered another.