iarch, shrilly. "Run! fly!
do you hear, my children?" The question was to his attendants,
apparently of the tribe. "Do you hear? They are Desert-born,
like yourselves. Catch them--quick!"

The plunging of the animals increased.

"Accursed Roman!" and the sheik shook his fist at the driver. "Did he
not swear he could drive them--swear it by all his brood of bastard
Latin gods? Nay, hands off me--off, I say! They should run swift
as eagles, and with the temper of hand-bred lambs, he swore.
Cursed be he--cursed the mother of liars who calls him son!
See them, the priceless! Let him touch one of them with a lash,
and"--the rest of the sentence was lost in a furious grinding of
his teeth. "To their heads, some of you, and speak them--a word,
one is enough, from the tent-song your mothers sang you. Oh, fool,
fool that I was to put trust in a Roman!"

Some of the shrewder of the old man's friends planted themselves
between him and the horses. An opportune failure of breath on his
part helped the stratagem.

Ben-Hur, thinking he comprehended the sheik, sympathized with him.
Far more than mere pride of property--more than anxiety for the
result of the race--in his view it was within the possible for
the patriarch, according to his habits of thought and his ideas
of the inestimable, to love such animals with a tenderness akin
to the most sensitive passion.

They were all bright bays, unspotted, perfectly matched, and so
proportioned as to seem less than they really were. Delicate ears
pointed small heads; the faces were broad and full between the eyes;
the nostrils in expansion disclosed membrane so deeply red as to
suggest the flashing of flame; the necks were arches, overlaid with
fine mane so abundant as to drape the shoulders and breast, while in
happy consonance the forelocks were like ravellings of silken veils;
between the knees and the fetlocks the legs were flat as an open
hand, but above the knees they were rounded with mighty muscles,
needful to upbear the shapely close-knit bodies; the hoofs were
like cups of polished agate; and in rearing and plunging they
whipped the air, and sometimes the earth, with tails glossy-black
and thick and long. The sheik spoke of them as the priceless, and it
was a good saying.

In this second and closer look at the horses, Ben-Hur read the story
of their relation to their master. They had grown up under his eyes,
objects of his special care in the day, his visions of pride in