eaps,
side-bolts, and stiff-legged jumps. These manoeuvres brought vicious
jerks on the wicked chain-bit that was cutting Pasha's tender mouth
sorrily and more jabs from the little knives. In this way did Pasha
fight until his sides ran with blood and his breast was plastered thick
with reddened foam.

In the meantime he had covered miles of road, and at last, along in the
cold gray of the morning, he was ridden into a field where were many
tents and horses. Pasha was unsaddled and picketed to a stake. This
latter indignity he was too much exhausted to resent. All he could do
was to stand, shivering with cold, trembling from nervous excitement,
and wait for what was to happen next.

It seemed ages before anything did happen. The beginning was a tripping
bugle-blast. This was answered by the voice of other bugles blown here
and there about the field. In a moment men began to tumble out of the
white tents. They came by twos and threes and dozens, until the field
was full of them. Fires were built on the ground, and soon Pasha could
scent coffee boiling and bacon frying. Black boys began moving about
among the horses with hay and oats and water. One of them rubbed Pasha
hurriedly with a wisp of straw. It was little like the currying and
rubbing with brush and comb and flannel to which he was accustomed and
which he needed just then, oh, how sadly. His strained muscles had
stiffened so much that every movement gave him pain. So matted was his
coat with sweat and foam and mud that it seemed as if half the pores of
his skin were choked.

He had cooled his parched throat with a long draught of somewhat muddy
water, but he had eaten only half of the armful of hay when again the
bugles sounded and "Mars" Clayton appeared. Tightening the girths, until
they almost cut into Pasha's tender skin, he jumped into the saddle and
rode off to where a lot of big black horses were being reined into line.
In front of this line Pasha was wheeled. He heard the bugles sound once
more, heard his rider shout something to the men behind, felt the
wicked little knives in his sides, and then, in spite of aching legs,
was forced into a sharp gallop. Although he knew it not, Pasha had
joined the Black Horse Cavalry.

The months that followed were to Pasha one long, ugly dream. Not that he
minded the hard riding by day and night. In time he became used to all
that. He could even endure the irregular feeding, the sleeping in the
open during all kin