playfulness toward his mother and her doings. He would
follow her about untiringly, pausing whenever she paused, starting off
again whenever she started off--seemingly bent upon acquiring the how
and why of her every movement.

But it was his playfulness finally that brought him first needless
suffering. The mare was standing with her nose in the feed-box. She had
stood thus many times during the past week; but usually, before, the box
had been empty, whereas now it contained a generous quantity of alfalfa.
But this the colt did not know. He only knew that he was interested in
this thing, and so went there to attempt, as many times before, to reach
his nose into the mysterious box. Finding that he could not, he began,
as never before, to frisk about the mare, tossing up his little heels
and throwing down his head with all the reckless abandon of a seasoned
"outlaw." He could do these things because he was a rare colt, stronger
than ever colt before was at his age, and for a time the mare suffered
his antics with a look of pleased toleration. But as he kept it up, and
as she was getting her first real sustenance since the day of his
coming, she at length became fretful and sounded a low warning. But this
the colt did not heed. Instead he wheeled suddenly and plunged directly
toward her, bunting her sharply. Nor did the single bunt satisfy him.
Again and again he attacked her, plunging in and darting away each time
with remarkable celerity, until, her patience evidently exhausted, she
whisked her head around and nipped him sharply. Screaming with pain and
fright, he plunged from her, sought the opposite side of the inclosure,
and turned upon her a pair of very hurt and troubled eyes.

Yet all the world over mothers are mothers. After a time--a long time,
as if to let her punishment sink in--the mare made her way slowly to the
colt, and there fell to licking him, seeming to tell him of her lasting
forgiveness. Under this lavish caressing the colt, as if to reveal his
own forgiveness for the dreadful hurt, bestowed similar attention upon
her--in this attention, though he did not know it, softening flesh that
had experienced no such consideration in years. Thus they stood, side by
side, mother and son, long into the day, laying the foundation of a love
that never dies--that strengthens, in fact, with the years, though all
else fail--love between mother and her offspring.

Other things, things of minor consequence, added th