se, whose hair was of the roughness and color of
heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by
harness and drudgery from colthood--though if all had their rights, he
ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some
Eastern plain instead of tugging here--had trodden this road almost
daily for twenty years. Even his subjection was not made congruous
throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn
through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one
side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of
ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas--the market-town to which he
journeyed--as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a
Dumpy level.

The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the
wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's head was a hook to which
the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from
the horse's shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain,
whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having
to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore,
especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for
modesty's sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a
handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently
subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned
with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking
at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its
interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw
without, but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who,
as they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated
private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that their
mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to the public
eye.

This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the
happiest, of the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they
could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey life and
recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles.

The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while
the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a
confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of
the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, s