nbosom long
forgotten things. He looked away from her toward the entrance. Men were
bringing tall hurdles outward to place them in the arena. The jumpers
were coming for exhibit.

"But," she insisted breathlessly, leaning toward him, and her hushed
voice sounding distinct from all the murmur surrounding them, "Tell me
the rest of it!"

"Tell you the rest of it? There's nothing more to tell! Nothing
except--except----" He hesitated, then laughed as if in self-derision.
"My friend fell down one day, half way up a hill. The top was there,
just above him. The top for which he had so valiantly tried. I, a boy,
his only friend, got his tired old head up on my knees and cried. A
policeman came and shook his head and went away and phoned. A vet came
and said, 'The best thing to do is to shoot him,' and then the
policeman pulled out a gun, and went toward Bo's head and bent over the
brave and tired old eyes of my friend, and--I fought! Fought so hard
that they had to give us a chance, Bo and me. They laughed, but the vet
phoned my employers and what they said, I never knew; but I do know that
they gave me my friend, and that about midnight I got him home, weak and
tottering, and put him out in our back garden, and told Maw all about
it. I thought she would understand and she did. She understands
everything. Everything! No one else ever could. And so--um-m-mh!
Bovolarapus was the first horse I ever owned and the last. We had to go
without some few things, Maw and I, to pay pasturage for a year or two
until he died, but it doesn't at all matter now. You see he was a sort
of inspiration to me because he told me so many things, and--that
somewhere, a long way I fear from where I've ever reached, there's a top
to the hill. He taught me that be we driver or driven there's a heart of
things that has to be learned. That the driver may learn from the driven
and that there is always the promise that the driven may drive. And so
may God pity the man who thinks that he can drive his world alone,
because, as far as I can dope it out, everything in life is made up of
give if you would take, and take only when you give. I may be wrong. One
never knows. That's the pity of it all. But that's the way it looks to
me, and--that's the way communing with a poor old horse taught me, the
only game I try to play. It's only when we've lost the true sense of
things that we say 'Life's nothing but a horse show--after all!'"

Staring at the arena, and br