men, their perfect master, but could not win the respect of
a horse. Mark! I speak not of the dull brutes whose round it is
to slave for slaves--the debased in blood and image--the dead
in spirit; but of such as mine here--the kings of their kind;
of a lineage reaching back to the broods of the first Pharaoh;
my comrades and friends, dwellers in tents, whom long association
with me has brought up to my plane; who to their instincts have
added our wits and to their senses joined our souls, until they
feel all we know of ambition, love, hate, and contempt; in war,
heroes; in trust, faithful as women. Ho, there!"

A servant came forward.

"Let my Arabs come!"

The man drew aside part of the division curtain of the tent,
exposing to view a group of horses, who lingered a moment where
they were as if to make certain of the invitation.

"Come!" Ilderim said to them. "Why stand ye there? What have I
that is not yours? Come, I say!"

They stalked slowly in.

"Son of Israel," the master said, "thy Moses was a mighty man,
but--ha, ha ha!--I must laugh when I think of his allowing
thy fathers the plodding ox and the dull, slow-natured ass,
and forbidding them property in horses. Ha, ha, ha! Thinkest
thou he would have done so had he seen that one--and that--and
this?" At the word he laid his hand upon the face of the first
to reach him, and patted it with infinite pride and tenderness.

"It is a misjudgment, sheik, a misjudgment," Ben-Hur said, warmly.
"Moses was a warrior as well as a lawgiver beloved by God; and to
follow war--ah, what is it but to love all its creatures--these
among the rest?"

A head of exquisite turn--with large eyes, soft as a deer's, and half
hidden by the dense forelock, and small ears, sharp-pointed and sloped
well forward--approached then quite to his breast, the nostrils open,
and the upper lip in motion. "Who are you?" it asked, plainly as
ever man spoke. Ben-Hur recognized one of the four racers he had
seen on the course, and gave his open hand to the beautiful brute.

"They will tell you, the blasphemers!--may their days shorten as
they grow fewer!"--the sheik spoke with the feeling of a man
repelling a personal defamation--"they will tell you, I say,
that our horses of the best blood are derived from the Nesaean
pastures of Persia. God gave the first Arab a measureless waste
of sand, with some treeless mountains, and here and there a well
of bitter waters; and said to him, 'Behold thy c